Mac Advice.

[Throrik]

What coding are you doing? If you are heavy into .NET using XAML and WPF and stuff like that then MacOS might not be great for you, but most other languages are well suited, even .NET Core is really good on MacOS.

I disagree with some of the others on Dual-Core not being good enough for programming, I was running some fairly good stuff on my 2013 MBA Dual Core until recently when upgraded because I could. Admittedly there are a thousand different use cases for programming. I wasn't super heavy into AKS or Docker or anything, I used to have a few vagrant boxes but that was about it.

 

[Avalon]

2014 MBPr owner from new (13” i5/8/256) I debated every few years when I was due to upgrade (read my current laptop had begun to fall apart) if it was worth paying the apple premium. My only regret after nearly 5 years of ownership is I should have done it years earlier. Apple has always looked after me, ignoring everything else I can’t think of a company that would accept the reporting of a screen issue at 3am, offer me an appointment at 10am and have it replaced before 1pm the same day, on a near 5 year old machine that’s good going, let alone free of charge. Physically my laptop is still almost as pristine as it was when it left the factory and will likely see me another few years. I’d not replace it with anything less and i’ve had the best Lenovo have made.

Desktop/server is a whole different conversation, but the mobile sector is apples domain imo.

 

[R4z0r]

I use a 2017 MBP for software development and it’s great. Depending on the work you’re doing, you may find it’s better to use a lower spec laptop and run a Linux box somewhere. You can build a really strong spec headless server and run everything from that. In this way the laptop is really just the terminal.

This is how we develop at work so it would probably give you some really good experience.