I can definitely relate, having very similar problems with a sizeable clj+cljs application (I am at roughly 50kLOC). Development on a laptop machine is something I’ve pretty much abandoned, because things are simply too slow. For a while I tried using cloud servers (similar train of thought to yours), and found that there are HUGE differences between the actual CPU performance that you get from cloud providers. I wrote up the results in a blog post: https://jan.rychter.com/enblog/cloud-server-cpu-performance-comparison-2019-12-12 in case anyone is interested. I found that using Docker and syncthing it’s possible to get a remote-development environment where you offload your compilation but still keep your editing on your desktop, but I use it only if I’m stuck without a powerful desktop. It’s always better to have a desktop workstation.
My net takeaways were:
- Single-core performance is what matters most for interactive development.
- Intel Xeon processors are dog slow. They are mostly good for cloud providers, because they let them sell overbooked capacity with a minimal hardware investment. Don’t believe the marketing hype, benchmark for yourself.
- Intel desktop processors are the best option. If you can live with Linux (I do sometimes, it’s annoying but usable), get a top of the line Intel desktop chip and you’ll have a speedy workstation.
- In the cloud, get a physical machine with an Intel desktop processor (like Hetzner’s EX62-NVMe) or if you want to rent by the hour, go with Vultr or Digital Ocean for the best price/performance.
- In the Mac world, avoid the iMac Pro and get an iMac instead, if you can live with the occasional fan noise. The iMac is roughly half the price and will actually be faster than the iMac Pro for the workloads we’re talking about, in spite of what you might hear from podcasters, etc.
After doing the benchmarking, I just bought an iMac with the i9-9900K and do most work on that.
Needless to say, I am immensely thankful to the ClojureScript team whenever there are improvements in compilation speed 