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Any and all. It's not particularly justifiable. It's more like, I'm a software engineer, and this is my home workshop. I run dozens of services, experiment with a bunch of different LLMs, tune my Postgres instance for good performance on large datasets, run ML data prep pipelines. All sorts really.

I'm also into motorcycles. Before I owned a house with a garage, I had to continuously pack my tools up and unpack them the next day. A bigger project meant schlepping parts in and out of the house. I had to keep track of the weather to work on my bikes.

Then, when I got a house, I made sure to get one with a garage and power. It transformed my experience. I was able to leave projects in situ until I had time. I had a place to put all my tools.

The workstation is a lot like that. The alternative would be renting. But then I'd spend a lot of my time schlepping data back and forth, investing in setting things up and tearing them down.

YMMV. I wouldn't dream of trying to universalize my experience.

by distances7 hours ago|

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I'm thinking the same. My total computing purchases in the last 25 years, including desktops, laptops, monitors, phones, and tablets is way under 20k.

I would bet it continues to be more affordable to buy reasonable specs with current consumer hardware, rather than buying a top system once.

by NoSalt3 hours ago|

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I haven't purchased a new computer in, at least, 10 years. I take pride (i.e., I have a sickness) in purchasing used laptops off eBay, beefing them up, and loading Debian on them. My two main computers are a Dell E5440 and a Lenovo ThinkPad T420. I, too, am a software developer, but [apparently] not as much of a rock star software developer at this gentleman. :-D