Why A Developer Needs The Best Possible Hardware

For the last couple of months, I have been navigating the bureaucratic hurdles of my company to justify the purchase of new workstations/laptops for the developer’s on my team. For whatever reason, only one model of workstation and one model of laptop is purchased by my company regardless of job type. So, software developers, analysts, and IT staff have the exact same hardware that business workers using Microsoft Office all day long have.

Currently, I am running a HP dc5700 configured as follows:

• Pentium D 2.33 Ghz Processor (533 MHz Bus Speed)
• 4 GB Ram
• 80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• Intel Q965 Video Card
• Dual 19 inch HP L1940T monitors
• Windows XP Professional – x86

This machine was underpowered the day I got it, two years ago, and won’t be replaced for another year. In a year, it will be replaced with another machine of comperable power.

In the course of my day, I am running two instances of Visual Studio 2008, Outlook, Word, RapidSQL or SQL Management Studio 2008, three or more Windows Explorer windows, half a dozen or more browser windows, plus an assortment of other tools. In the course of developing a single feature, I often flip between the database, my code, a web browser and a requirements document or technical specification in Word. I will compile my code dozens of times per day, run unit tests, and run database schema comparisons all with dozens of windows services running in the background that a typical business user will never have installed on their machine. In fact, no business user will ever come close to pushing my workstation as hard as I do in a given day. I am willing to bet other developers have a similar configuration and a similar workflow as I do.

So, for other IT shops who purchase a standard set of hardware for all employees, or who feel developers don’t need more costly hardware then other employees, here is my counterargument.

I realize these number leave out a variety of factors, both in favor and opposition of buying high-end hardware for developers. But, we are talking about the most fundamentally important tool in a software developer’s day-to-day work. This is the tool at our fingertips 40+ hours a week. Yes, writing a check for $3000 * n number of developers every two years is a big expense, but when compared to the cost of running a software development team, it is barely anything. The productivity increase from running faster, more capable hardware is more then going to make up for the upfront costs.

The point I am trying to make, and the point often overlooked by IT departments bound by (hiding behind) behind enterprise standards and service agreements or afraid of opening up a pandora’s box of custom hardware requests, is that different users have different requirements, and there is no one size fits all solution to any problem. Software Development is difficult and expensive enough without the proper tools to do the job.

* Updated post to reflect correct percentages. Stupid decimal places.