Spolsky noted that if compiling takes even 15 seconds, programmers get bored and switch to reading The Onion, and that two monitors make GUI work much easier. Hardware and software licenses cost little next to a developer's salary, so a slow laptop is an expensive economy.
For front-end work that means plenty of memory for browser, editor and dev server; a second screen for DevTools; near-instant hot reload with a bundler such as Vite 25,978 (Vite); and fast CI runners. AI assistants are now part of the kit: in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 84% of respondents used or planned to use AI tools. GitHub 29 's Copilot 29 code review became generally available on April 4, 2025, and reviews pull requests before a human colleague does (AI-assisted Coding compares assistants).