I've been running Apple stuff for years personally and every generation seems to become lighter and more powerful. But yeah, in my 30s I didn't mind lugging around the 17" Mac Book Pro with the CD drive removed and hackily replaced with an additional battery. Today its an up-to-date MBP 16" clamshelled away on my desk with wireless keyboard and the hot Apple display - but - when I travel its always the Mac Book Air ... because it weighs nothing.
I do recall being a younger person and lugging around the latest, hottest Think Brick I could get my hands on but at the time nothing was "light" so there was no concept of "heavy".
I don't think its so much an age thing so much as the fact that high power and light weight now come in the same package.
Edit: Today its possible to be out on the town all day, meetings etc with a mere iPad and a keyboard. If I need to do some heavy lifting I'll bring the M1 Air - but remember having to lug around those gigantic charging bricks because machines ate watts and batteries sucked? I'll never miss that. So Lenovo shaved 1/4th a lb off the laptop but the charging brick got 1/2 lb heavier.
You can sell accounts with high karma, but your hourly takehome would be much less than minimum wage. Then again, I can't argue about Kubernetes at Burger King, so working for HN has its perks too
If they want to downvote I think you need a certain karma level.
Do that with enough accounts and you can control the narrative on certain subjects such as downvoting/hiding all the Twitter news that is negative, or the latest FAANG layoffs?
Unlikely though. Perhaps to positively promote your new startup? But then you don't need karma for that, so I have no idea.
As long as its a viable discussion topic I don't really see an issue. At least it's not like Reddit's r/askreddit which is relentlessly inundated with the most absurd, or downright incomprehensible posts just for the sake of grinding karma points.
Hm. One nearly every day. Some kind of journaling regimen or creative writing exercise?
It's actually an interesting question if it had asked what adjustments people have made. I literally yesterday bought a 100g £10 keyboard to see if I could travel for a week with just a tablet. The GaN charger was a win.
Aside from the question itself the posts seem pretty low effort. My experience is that a typical Ask HN has two or three paragraphs explaining the question in depth, why the question is important to the person asking, etc.
I began using reading glasses at the age of 43. Ten years later, I'm at +2 and it's not enough, need to move up a notch again.
Age related long-sightedness is one of the most annoying things. You can see far away sort of OK, but you can't read your phone or something printed in small letters right under your nose. You also realize how this is an invisible and largely ignored problem by the fact that packaging designers (and most designers in general) don't care about you at all.
It only gets worse as you age but you are of course reluctant about "upgrading" your glasses because you know they only make it worse and there's no going back from each upgrade.
As for laptops, I do prefer 16" since I move cities and countries a lot, can't afford moving a desk monitor with me.
> you are of course reluctant about "upgrading" your glasses because you know they only make it worse
Is that actually true? I always assumed my lenses would harden at a more-or-less constant rate no matter what I do. I wouldn't think wearing glasses could the speed up or slow down the process.
Yes I heard from a doctor that reading glasses only make the process faster because occasionally and inevitably you look at distant objects, i.e. much further than your screen, which your reading glasses are not meant for.
Interesting, I'll have to read more. From your description it sounds like the problem could be mostly mitigated if you put your glasses on only after sitting down at your desk, and remove them before standing up.
I've always bought the largest screen I could get. I really make use of the space.
What I did around the time I turned 41 was buy a giant 50" 4k TV and mount it about 5 feet (1.5 meters) away from my head. I run it at 100% magnification, but you could easily run it at 150% if you want bigger text.
Spreading an IDE over such a large space is like a godsend, and the distance helps reduce eyestrain.
One of the first things I do is increase the font size in the OS, and my browser. I did this even when I was young (when higher resolution screens started coming out), and never understood how people find 12pt acceptable. There's nothing wrong with my eyesight though.
To answer the original question though, yes :) I've been going for light over power for a while now.
This is actually a more relevant question, the answer being sometimes "yes". Or, prefer to have a large high-rez external display at your usual places of work.
Not really. Since I carry them in backpacks the priority is durability and larger screen, both may lead to extra weight. 40+ so may not be considered as "older" but I'm definitely far from my prime and sick very often.
A few years back I twisted my ankle dismounting from a bus when I went to NYC for a business trip (expecting to walk 5+ miles a day) and I blamed an overpacked bag. It took at least six months to recover and I made a point to not overpack my bag. I figure it is ok to have a heavy laptop but a heavy laptop plus a lot of other stuff is too much. It is bad when it is a heavy laptop, a netbook, a tablet, portable game console, minidisc player, several books, etc.
I walk to and from a parking space or bus stop to get to my office and lately I have been overpacking my backpack again. Maybe it is a mistake but I justify it in that soldiers train by carrying a heavy backpack. I sure am careful about getting on and off a bus.
For years i thought I had trouble with my shoulders but I found out it was TMD, a bite guard made a huge difference.
I'm almost 42 and I carry my laptop in a backpack. Sometimes I carry two laptops. The backpack is one of those designed to carry a laptop.
I recently started carrying a full size keyboard and mouse, because I find it harder and harder to adapt to the laptop keyboard and touchpad for extended periods of time.
The weight never bothers me; but again, it's a properly-designed laptop backpack. If I used a (cough) "professional-looking" briefcase or shoulder bag, it would really hurt to carry.
If you really need to look professional, I suggest finding a very small computer that can fit in the pocket of a trenchcoat. Keep in mind that today's computers are very fast, so they might be "good enough" to run Visual Studio / XCode / whatever on a moderately-sized project.
Regular weight training and correct adjustment of the straps in a good backpack should be enough.
If the few pounds of a 16” MacBook Pro are causing you pain, even if you are over fifty, you should concern yourself more with taking better care of your body.
The trend is towards smaller lap tops anyway, regardless of developer age.
But, carrying a heavy lap top in a backpack for long periods of time is not a good idea. A few years of this in my 40s led to shoulder tendonitis that still has me seeing a physio regularly. I carry it in a hand held brief case now.
These North Face and Samsonite back packs designed for lap tops don't have the same supports that proper hiking backpacks have. You end up carrying all the weight on your shoulders instead of on your hips. Not a good idea!
I think most people who carry laptops regularly care about the weight. Having to travel with laptop made me replace the until-then-beloved thinkpad quite quickly.
I’m only 33, so hardly “old”. But I have started to feel the effects of age in small ways.
I prefer larger screens so that I can increase font sizes and strain my eyes less. I also worry much more about ergonomics, because lots of laptop hacking has started to turn into RSI.
And that all means bigger laptops are better, and they are usually not lighter. I used a netbook in college - I can’t fathom it now.
Also you can never be too thin or too rich. Older devs can afford the sleeker laptops. And we don't need to do hard grunt work, so having a lightweight 'supervisor-top' is a mark of that. Look at briefcase dimensions, the C-suite always have the smallest/thinnest, if any at all.
Yes, typically weight is a concern for a lot of my purchases I carry around now. Moving from the m1 air to a 14 mbp pro was not something I really wanted to do, but I needed the extra ram.
Also downgraded my camera kits, and often dont bring them places anymore.
ha, this made me laugh out loud. For years I've been using the smallest laptop and complaining to my friends about the extra weight a big laptop causes in my backpack. I feel even a one pound delta. This started for me well, always. I don't think it was getting older. I've just always been a wimp I guess.
For me lighter was better. But as I get older my eyes decided 'oh you want to use these to see things?! hahahaha' so now a bigger screen is my main requirement.
I do recall being a younger person and lugging around the latest, hottest Think Brick I could get my hands on but at the time nothing was "light" so there was no concept of "heavy".
I don't think its so much an age thing so much as the fact that high power and light weight now come in the same package.
Edit: Today its possible to be out on the town all day, meetings etc with a mere iPad and a keyboard. If I need to do some heavy lifting I'll bring the M1 Air - but remember having to lug around those gigantic charging bricks because machines ate watts and batteries sucked? I'll never miss that. So Lenovo shaved 1/4th a lb off the laptop but the charging brick got 1/2 lb heavier.