Computing

2023-01-07 Developing on low cost kit

As a developer with almost 50 years of experience starting as a computer operator on a mainframe when I was just 17 I have usually been spoilt in having the best kit required for the job which is what you would expect if your company wants you to develop the best quality product in the required time frame.

I have had some challenges such as in the 1980's developing quite a complex application using Dbase II for a company on an Osborne portable with a 5 inch screen 52x24, 64k memory and I think 90k single density 5 1/4 floppy disks (may have been dual density 180k). It required some patience but I completed several projects on this for my customer.

Generally though I have been blessed to work on some top of the range kit.

Nowadays I develop mostly using my own kit and although I have a reasonably performant i7 computer with a reasonable spec and driving 3 monitors, I often find myself pulling out my Pentium based Chromebook to do development, I paid 119 pounds for the Chromebook a couple of years ago, it has a low power Pentium processor, 4gb memory, 64 gb drive and really aimed at the casual browser. However I have found myself developing several applications on it including a 'Location Logger PWA', a 'Bird Box recording database' using reactJS as well as using it to develop many small functions that I will then incorporate in a larger system

I use this system for a number of reasons, battery lasts for ages, being a Chromebook its really a Linux box and it allows me to run most of my favourite apps, Git, Node, PostgreSQL, Typescript, ReactJS etc. Yes its very slow compared to my i7 but its still workable. Also I can take it anywhere, if I break it, I have only lost 119 pounds.

Recently I did think about upgrading to an i5 Chromebook and may well do that but to be honest it was either a new laptop or a new canoe and I really want a new canoe. I am working fine on the Chromebook but at some point I will upgrade if I find a small screen i5 Chromebook that fits in with whatever I am doing.

So what point am I making? basically if you are a professional developer you will almost certainly use the best equipment available, but as I have found you don't have to, so for those on a budget who want to learn python, PostgreSQL, JavaScript etc. they can easily do that on a low cost machine as shown here.

If you want to find out more then just use your search engine to find 'chromebook crostini' which will probably offer https://chromeos.dev/en/linux