Until last year I used a 2011 iMac with Linux, 24gb of RAM and an SSD. Quite a bit better in performance and security than laptops I've seen engineers issued last year.
the key is "with linux". Try developing iOS apps or do anything within the apple ecosystem (e.g. check your photos?). Not viable for 99.9% of mac users.
My computer was too old for Apple, a characteristic similar to saying 90% of brand new laptops are too blonde. There are very few modern Apple development machines but anyone with an old desktop can make most modern software. (There are also plenty of exceptions where an Arm laptop isn't usable in software development, so nothing is universal.)
Thanks, I didn't know much about that and it could be helpful with relatives, etc.
Most of the Apple hardware bought for me has been by employers who understood I wasn't going to use Apple software. In the big scheme of things, it is better to have a reduced set of drivers and pay a bit more than have an employee fiddling on drivers because Acer skimmed another $1 off their motherboard cost.
Wishing you are always on the beach is pretty much just about hedonic desire, like wishing you were always eating steak. I've never heard of anyone on their death bed who wished they ate one more steak or spent one more day on the beach in their twenties. People regret not building/maintaining important relationships which generally require real environmental stressors, more like the office but not with coworkers.
I've only heard deathbed confessions on tv where they were full of regret in real life. Most people are just happy to see people they loved. Real deathbed confessions are rarely shared.
Programming really is about digging through categorically petty issues. You can make a game of it and even join a group in a shared game with a paradigm that treats certain petty things as extremely important.
Personally, I think the amount of energy it takes to play these petty games in any given employer/code-base wanes over time. I would recommend putting away all other coding for a bit and see if you start to get enough energy for doing truly different things in your free time.
