What are the minimum specifications for a Scala developer laptop?

[bryan hunt]

Hello,

We all know that developer toolchains aren't getting any lighter as time marches on. The days of compiling code on a 600mhz single core system with 512mb of RAM are probably not going to be seen again in my lifetime.

And now it is time to buy my next development machine. As I intend to use it purely for Scala development, I thought the community could provide some valuable advice.

What realistically are the minimum system specifications for a Scala developer machine, running Intellij, doing builds with Maven and SBT? I'm going to building fairly big Play Framework, and distributed applications, comprising many hundreds of dependent classes.

Thanks,

Bryan Hunt

[Kevin Wright]

MacBook pro.

NTFS is pitiful at lots of small files (think compiling) and the command-line tooling in windows is very much 3rd rate (cygwin helps... a bit).  So you're down to OSX or Linux.

Of these, the mac has:

- more screen real-estate in the retina versions

- better anti-aliasing (you're staring at text all day)

- illuminated keyboard for those late-night hack sessions

- consistent copy/paste behaviour, even in the console

- better battery life (scalac can push your processor quite hard)

- more games available on Steam for when you need a break :)

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stra

[bryan hunt]

Kevin, Thanks for the feedback. Leaving aside the environment, what do you think the minimum machine specs would be?

[Kevin Wright]

Get the best that you can afford...

That's the main problem with macs, there's no real opportunity for expansion.  Except for drive space via thunderbolt/USB3 and (surprisingly) the GPU via a thunderbolt PCIe breakout box; it's not a very portable way to expand though.

CPU and memory you're stuck with what you started with.

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[Peter Pilgrim]

Hi There

Hey there, I would get a new Haswell Retina 15" with 16GB RAM and get
the biggest solid state drive that you can possibly afford, which
means taking the expensive option, but you'ill praise yourself 1 year
down the line.

I don't use Scala a lot these days, but the tools Java, JavaScript,
Chrome web digital and JVM are getting hungry and fatter for the work
we have to do.

Peter Pilgrim,
**Java Champion**,
Java EE Software Development / Design / Architect for `BlueChip'
enterprises, London, UK

I am the author of ``The Java EE 7 Developer Handbook'' Packt Pub
(September 2013)
http://www.packtpub.com/java-ee-7-developer-handbook/book

Java EE ++ JavaFX ++ Scala ++ Groovy ++ Android ++ Java
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[Tim Pigden]

at least 8gb ram

Much compiling can use multiple threads so i7 mobile of some sort.

SSD - but unless you're doing a lot with data (or are using windows) you can probably get away with 128gb or thereabouts.

hmdi interface for when or if you decide 1 screen is not enough.

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Optrak Distribution Software Limited
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[Alois Cochard]

You don't need 8gb if you don't use IDEA or Eclipse... but if you want to run integration test in parallel with emebedded database system, that would be good to have!

Good CPU + SSD is what really matter for me.

I always take ThinkPad, good quality without a big fruit draw on it.

Alois Cochard

http://aloiscochard.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/aloiscochard

http://github.com/aloiscochard

[Kevin Wright]

Nothing wrong with a big illuminated fruit, there's a wide range of awesome vinyl stencils available to truly make the device your own and *really* shine when presenting at conferences :)

More seriously... It's never a bad idea to get as much memory as you can.  Not just for the compiler or IDE though, I'm a big fan of using virtual machines for testing installers or modelling entire distributed systems. (top tip: vagrant helps here)

[bryan hunt]

Alois, I’m a bit of a lamer though - I generally need an IDE to navigate other people’s source code, henceforth known as OPSC.

So thanks for the feedback all, I’ve got a pretty clear idea of the options. 

SSD, fast CPU, and 8GB of ram are becoming the minimum realistic requirements for doing Scala development. 

Windows is out too, because of the sub-optimal NTFS behaviour when dealing with lots of small files (like what a compiler generates).

I suspect either a Thinkpad with Linux, or an Apple Pro are the minimum needed to do this stuff.

Bryan

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[Alois Cochard]

Hi Bryan,

I have sometime to do the lamer as well on OPSC with fancy IntelliJ to browse the code ;-)

I'll back Kevin about the ram for virtualisation needs, that's quite cool being able to have the same stack as your production server running in a VM.

Hope you'll find a good laptop, I heard the Dell XPS are good scala control tower as well.

If you go Linux, I'm running btrfs on my SSD for a while now and it's working nicely. I think it's stable for dev workstation.

Cheers

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[Grant Klopper]

Hi

I work on a large Scala project (built on Play Framework).

Some of our devs are using 13' macbooks (not the latest ones) and they really struggle with compilation and running tests and such.

I would certainly go for a quad core i7 (would not even consider a dual core of any sort).

Our desktop machines are quad core i7 with 16GB Ram and traditional (non SSD) hard drives running Ubuntu and they work great (3 - 4 years old).

My  home machine (Dell laptop) is a quad core i7 with 8GB of RAM and traditional disk running Ubuntu, it is also 2 or 3 years old and does a reasonable job.

Grant

[bryan hunt]

Wow Grant, that’s crazy! I didn’t know the guardian had open sourced their entire front-end! Kudos to them!