[FFmpeg-devel] Hardware purchase request: AVX512-capable laptop

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le lauantaina 6. tammikuuta 2024, 12.38.28 EET Lynne a écrit :
> Emergencies could happen, but progress must always happen.

Laptops are more prone to breaking, and as already noted less serviceable. The 
whole premise is that your current laptop broke after just 2 years, while the 
normally (fiscally) expected lifetime of a laptop is 3 years.

Don't get me wrong! I don't deny that emergencies of that sort do happen to 
software engineers. Considering the "running cost" of a skilled software 
engineer, many employers will want to minimise the risk that they get bogged 
down by lack of a development computer, and the inability to carry a laptop 
with them on business trips.

But then, whose emergency would are they exactly? If an entity has dire needs 
of your continued ability to work, then they should take the measures and 
costs. That's just not something that the FFmpeg foundation should bare. 
Except maybe for Michael, I think the project will do just fine if any 
developer is out of a computer for a week, to be honest.

Finally, the flip side of this is that the ergonomy and performance of your 
FFmpeg development environment is at least as critical, if not more, to your 
continued ability to work. In other words, if a developer is critical to the 
project, then it is detrimental to the project if they use a laptop, because 
laptops are slower and less healthy.

> Also, I think some developers here would disagree with the notion that
> desktop machines are always the best option, and I think I that subjects
> such as ergonomy, uselessness when not docked,

That's simply not a matter of subjective opinion of an hypothetical developer. 
The point about ergonomy is generally accepted among specialists based on 
serious studies. And by specialists I mean medical doctors and occupational 
healthcare therapists, not FFmpeg developers. That's not "subjective" in my 
book.

> being less serviceable, are
> subjective metrics.

How about you count the number of parts that can be independently replaced in 
a laptop vs a desktop. Care to explain how that metric is a "subjective" 
exactly? And that's not even counting that some of the serviceable laptop 
parts are more or less model-dependent.

-- 
レミ・デニ-クールモン
http://www.remlab.net/