Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is Macbook Air 11" enough for coding?

skllmyh

skllmyh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 18, 2016
1
0
I have a very heavy and huge laptop at home. (connected to TV as a second screen). and it's really hard to take it to somewhere. so I'm looking for a Macbook Air. its gonna be my first apple product.

I have TV at home, so screen is not an issue. the only thing that bothers me is performance. Am I gonna have trouble while coding? and, is 11-inch enough? or worth to buy?
 
As long as you have 8 gigs of ram and an I7 CPU it should be quite sufficient.
 
Last edited:
I coded on the base model 2014 11" MBA (4GB RAM, 128GB SSD) for a year without any issues. Worked wonderfully. I upgraded to the 2015 rMB to get an even smaller laptop and a Retina display. I think the rMB has a slower CPU and still works great for coding.

Depending on what you're writing, compilation may take a bit but your IDE or other tools might compile bits in the background while you're writing, making it a non-issue (like Xcode).
 
What are you coding exactly? Because every brick and motar laptop can code HTML/CSS/Ruby/JavaScript/Java/PHP.
 
  • Like
Reactions: adib
Screen resolution on the 11" air sucks. I would definitely recommend the 13" more. It's really not that much bigger to carry around and the screen real estate is so much more useful.

I recently sold my 2011 13" MacBook Air 4gb 256 SSD for around $300 on the forums.
 
marioman38 said:
Screen resolution on the 11" air sucks. I would definitely recommend the 13" more. It's really not that much bigger to carry around and the screen real estate is so much more useful.

I recently sold my 2011 13" MacBook Air 4gb 256 SSD for around $300 on the forums.
Click to expand...
It is highly subjective. Although the screen resolution of the 11 MBA is smaller (smaller screen, duh) the 11 MBA (135 ppi) has a slightly higher pixel density than the 13 (128 ppi). If anyone thinks that the screen on the MBAs "suck" then they shouldn't buy either one of them. I think the screen is fine.

Regarding the size differences between the 11 MBA and 13 MBA... it is significant. The 11 MBA feels more like carrying an 9.7 iPad with a keyboard case whereas the 13 MBA is closer to feeling like carrying a non-retina 13 Macbook Pro.

Since the OP has a "battleship" notebook setup at home (that is stationary) something that complements that should be extremely portable for mobile situations. IMO, 11 MBA fits the bill.

I have an iMac at my home office and switch off between an 11 MBA and 12.9 iPad Pro for mobile use. I use the 11 MBA for all of the things that the OP stated he'd use it for. For me, it works quite well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: StoneyG, Boyd01, cincygolfgrrl and 1 other person
I love the 11" Air. I have one for my work out and about, and a large, beefy desktop setup at home for more serious work. I enjoy being able to have the smallest possible machine in the road with me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sracer
My last Air (a few years ago) was passable even for lightweight media tasks, and totally sufficient for text-based things.

I remember doing a little programming in it, and feeling more restricted by the smaller display than by the performance – what with long lines of code and wanting to see more than one working area on the screen at once.
 
marioman38 said:
I would definitely recommend the 13" more. It's really not that much bigger to carry around
Click to expand...

I went from a 13" MBA to an 11" MBA and love it. The size/weight difference is really quite significant and if you haven't owned both then you won't appreciate that. Now you aren't going to break your back carrying either around, but the difference is very real.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cincygolfgrrl and sracer
Used a 2013 8GB/i7/512GB SSD model for about 18 months. Did everything I needed and then some. iOS dev work, web development, and some dabbling in other areas. Plus heavy Photoshop use.
 
skllmyh said:
I have a very heavy and huge laptop at home. (connected to TV as a second screen). and it's really hard to take it to somewhere. so I'm looking for a Macbook Air. its gonna be my first apple product.

I have TV at home, so screen is not an issue. the only thing that bothers me is performance. Am I gonna have trouble while coding? and, is 11-inch enough? or worth to buy?
Click to expand...

I believe Linus Torvalds use's one, so I'd have to say yes. Now regarding the screen size / resolution, ONLY YOU can say whether or not that resolution is going to work for you. Apple has the 2 week return period and I think Best Buy has 30 day's
 
  • Like
Reactions: chickenwingfly
It's plenty power for coding I think. I was developing iOS apps on a old MacBook. There are few areas of use that any computer made in the last 3-5 years wouldn't be able to handle. It might be slower sometimes when it comes to heavy computing, like building projects, rendering 4k video, advanced physics modeling... but can it do these things sure. And to get really heavy computing power you have to go up to a quad core 15inch mac or desktop. All the 13inch Mac Pro or Air models are in a similar class of computer power, maybe 5-30% here and there... but you won't get twice the performance.

Using an 11inch screen takes a bit to get used to. If you can customize your IDE to deal with the limited vertical space, then it's not a big issue. But if you are stuck with a chunky horizontal bar that you can't get rid of in your software's editors, it won't be fun editing things on it. I like eliminating all the editing chrome and call up the various screens with key commands. It kind of goes against the current design of using one screen operation with all the panes there.... but I like to open any thing in a new window and have that take up the full screen to edit and then close that screen down.

It'd be good to trial the resolution and limited space on a current computer to see if you can manage with the size.
 
  • Like
Reactions: StoneyG
Coding doesn't stress even a slow computer unless you have a truly humongous software suite. Running what you code, even for test purposes, might. That's what you have to look at. You haven't given us enough information to say anything one way or the other about whether a MacBook Air will be good for running whatever it is you code.
 
Just to bump this "1 week old" topic, my $.5:

YES. It will be enough. You can code on a Raspberry Pi 1 if you want.
Now, if you're coding the next installment of an AAA game, then nope. Otherwise for regular coding, of non "power hungry, massive" apps, you can do it on pretty much anything.

If the question implied "will the screen be enough", then as somebody said already, only you can know. I find a 11" too small but some people love them, so it's a matter of preferences.
 
coding means seeing thousands of line of codes with focus. save your eyes. buy yourself a second hand macbook 12". the display is awesome and your eyes will thank you for that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back