Am I expecting to(o?) much out of my early 2011 13" MBP?

[shoelessone]

Sorry to sound like a snob, but what kind of a developer are you if you do not grasp the basics of how a computer works?

It's OK, but hopefully you don't mind if I defend myself

I originally made this thread more hoping that somebody would pick up on the "I moved everything from an older iMac" piece and say "previous experience on the forums has been that moving from XXXXX installations to YYYYY installations can cause performance issues for ______ and _____ reasons."

I'm a proud owner of a CS degree, and have taken the classic "operating systems" class where we went through CPU delegation algorithms, drew state diagrams, talked about (here it is!) paging and memory management, etc. So if you had asked me "what is paging" I could have given you a pretty good explanation. BUT, I didn't know what "page-in" vs "page-out" was, or which was hitting memory or which was hitting the HDD. So, I googled it . I also didn't know what a good or "normal" ratio was.

Finally, while I started out with C++ and did C++/Java through college, after college I've been mainly programming with the web languages (PHP and some Node.js for fun) and I've met quite a few other developers (and we are writing real, honest to god OO code, design patterns and all!) who DON'T have the background that you and I might, and wouldn't know what paging was. So while I'd argue that a super well rounded developer would probably understand how a computer worked, I don't think it's an absolute pre-req for being a developer (or even a good developer!).


Now that I hopefully have defended myself (sorry, but the internet is serious business!), thanks again for all of the replies everybody has given. It sounds like more RAM in the box might not be a bad first step.

The one "catch" to all of this is that it's actually a work computer, and while 60 bucks isn't a lot to my boss, I still hate asking. But I think it'lll be worth it.


Of course, I'd still love to hear other details or opinions!

Oh, and the two largest memory hogs seem to be Firefox and PHPStorm. PHPStorm I'll give a pass (~700 MB) because I have a fairly substantial code base open and I really love auto complete, but Firefox (also ~700 vs Chromes ~100-150 MB) is ridiculous.

Oh, and as a final point, I'll say that I still maintain that Lion feels significantly buggier and slower then Snow Leopard ever did. I don't like the new features (well, besides the App store but that was out in 10.6). I am generally not happy with it.

 

[dwag3]

Installing an SSD is not "throwing money at it". People are surprised, amazed even, by the speed gain from an SSD over a traditional HD.

 

[shoelessone]

Installing an SSD is not "throwing money at it". People are surprised, amazed even, by the speed gain from an SSD over a traditional HD.

I would like to go that route eventually on my own computer, but I don't know if I'd ask my boss at the moment for the $$$ for an SSD. All of the other computers in the office are running A-OK without an SSD.

 

[snaky69]

I would like to go that route eventually on my own computer, but I don't know if I'd ask my boss at the moment for the $$$ for an SSD. All of the other computers in the office are running A-OK without an SSD.

RAM is rather cheap at the moment, depending on this week's specials an 8GB kit will cost you anywhere between $35 to $50 with the shipping included. For better bang for your buck, it's really quite hard to beat.

 

[fr4c]

Oh, and the two largest memory hogs seem to be Firefox and PHPStorm. PHPStorm I'll give a pass (~700 MB) because I have a fairly substantial code base open and I really love auto complete, but Firefox (also ~700 vs Chromes ~100-150 MB) is ridiculous.

Oh, and as a final point, I'll say that I still maintain that Lion feels significantly buggier and slower then Snow Leopard ever did. I don't like the new features (well, besides the App store but that was out in 10.6). I am generally not happy with it.

Lion is more of a resource hog compared to Snow Leopard, so just with Firefox and PHPStorm open you're probably already using the full 4GB. An 8GB memory upgrade at "full cost" right now will probably run you about $60-70 from Crucial or OWC, which is little compared to how much more productive you will be at your job. Any boss (especially in a tech environment) should be able to understand the value of time and resources.

 

[shoelessone]

Lion is more of a resource hog compared to Snow Leopard, so just with Firefox and PHPStorm open you're probably already using the full 4GB. An 8GB memory upgrade at "full cost" right now will probably run you about $60-70 from Crucial or OWC, which is little compared to how much more productive you will be at your job. Any boss (especially in a tech environment) should be able to understand the value of time and resources.

Thanks for the reply - he will certainly understand, and it won't be a problem at all. I'm just the type of person who hates to ask!

RAM it is, we'll see where we go from there!

 

[Heebeejeebies]

Had a similar problem. Take a look at how much of your memory is wired. If a majority of your memory is wired, you probably have a memory leak. (I found that Safari used up a lot of wired memory when I upgraded to Lion). If you can free up some of that wired memory, you may be able to get by without much of an upgrade. Most of your memory should be active. If that's not the case, take a look at individual apps...

 

[Risasi]

I am also a developer. I use a similar set of programs but different ones like Eclipse, Opera, other servers. I get by fine with 4GB. Only when I launch the Windows VM which needs 1GB I get to the limits but the important stuff still stays in RAM.
I also have an SSD thus loading stuff back from swap makes very little difference. I cannot ever feel serious slowdowns. Sometimes spaces/expose after I didn't use it for a while is choppy once only but when I switch frequently it stays fluid.
More RAM will help you and not cost much
but get an SSD it really helps with many developer stuff. We often need many small files which aren't held in RAM and here the SSD shines.
Eclipse used to be a pain I always kept it running because starting it took for ever on an HDD. On an SSD it starts much faster and can finish many tasks much faster. It doesn't help with compile times which are still CPU bound but with all the other stuff in between.

This is true, I have a hard time maxing 4GB for any significant period of time unless I'm running VM's which I've moved server-side to ESX host machines. When I did a side by side MBP 17" vs a 13" Air and saw the Air running circles around the MBP for day to day tasks, well...but there is apparently no convincing this crowd. SSD on the boot drive is the single biggest bang for buck upgrade that can be made today. Their loss...

 

[thundersteele]

Oh, and the two largest memory hogs seem to be Firefox and PHPStorm. PHPStorm I'll give a pass (~700 MB) because I have a fairly substantial code base open and I really love auto complete, but Firefox (also ~700 vs Chromes ~100-150 MB) is ridiculous.

Don't let Chrome fool you. It might only use 130 MB, but for every tab it starts a separate Google Chrome Renderer process that eat up to 100 MB each. And then there's Google Chrome Worker, that also takes up some space. The only benefit is that if you close tabs the memory gets freed up again, something that firefox and safari don't seem to do.

 

[Queen6]

Thanks for the reply - he will certainly understand, and it won't be a problem at all. I'm just the type of person who hates to ask!

RAM it is, we'll see where we go from there!

I would ask for a different machine, instead of a low end MBP, development time for any company equals only one thing, money; Quad Core etc...

 

[dusk007]

A SSD drive will speed up compiling quite a bit, unless your project consists of 4 classes.

Can be true. Never really checked side by side.
It is the only thing left that still sometimes takes a noticable time. Compared to other stuff that used to cause slowdowns while being perfectly snappy now.
But you are probably right. Now that I think of it. A full maven build with many many dependencies and what not of a project with a couple dozen classes takes 0.4 seconds. Running jUnit tests is what takes the most time.

I think it gets a developer more than most other people because access time and random reads matter so much more to us than to many other users who mostly need sequential reads and only very little random.

 

[theSeb]

No stress shoeless one. There is nice article on developer.apple.com that explains memory management.

 

[Mojo1]

Go with the RAM upgrade and skip the SSD unless you have the extra $$$ to join the current SSD fad...

BTW, on your MBP increasing the RAM to 8GB will up the shared VRAM from 384MB to 512MB. You can confirm it by clicking "About This Mac."

 

[ABadSanta]

Everyone else has probably said this, but you will notice a huge difference after:

Clean install of Lion
Upgrading to 8 GB of RAM
Upgrading to an SSD

I know the SSD can be very expensive, but I have 8 GB of RAM and even with more than 6 applications running simultaneously it's silky smooth.

 

[Titanium81]

Everyone else has probably said this, but you will notice a huge difference after:

Clean install of Lion
Upgrading to 8 GB of RAM
Upgrading to an SSD

I know the SSD can be very expensive, but I have 8 GB of RAM and even with more than 6 applications running simultaneously it's silky smooth.

Upgrading to 8GB Ram + SSD should make your Late 2011 MacBook Pro 13" SCREAM!

I am planning on doing this exact setup.