This "professional" narrative is seriously annoying. I work on software 10h+ a day, some of it is (hopefully) at the cutting edge of biology. I even get paid. Use neural nets. And vim. So I should probably fall within the "professional" category. At least more than "soccer mom", with regards to gender, reproductive status, and offsprings' choice of sports.
I have never felt the need to plug in 6+ peripherals. 16GB work fine even with a Linux and a Windows 10 virtual machine running. If I run out of battery after 12h of working on a flight, I sleep – but I don't dream of replaceable batteries.
Whatever all these self-professed "professionals" are doing, it sounds a lot more like what I did in high school: spending weeks swapping components, recompiling Linux kernels for 2% higher values at some useless benchmark, building incredibly-convoluted setups to really finally create a media centre rivalling Fleet Street etc.
I agree, for my workflow. I just bought a new laptop, and didn't even go for a pro model. If I need more resources, I have a 60gig ram, 16 core VPS I can spin up, but for most Java, Haskell, and other dev work, and for writing my books, a plain MacBook is quite sufficient (after 1 week to get used to, and like, the keyboard). I did toss my old external monitor for a LG 4K, a purchase I am also really happy with.
For fun, I am writing iOS and Android app versions of my cookingspace web app, and the MacBook also performs well enough for that.
I have never felt the need to plug in 6+ peripherals. 16GB work fine even with a Linux and a Windows 10 virtual machine running. If I run out of battery after 12h of working on a flight, I sleep – but I don't dream of replaceable batteries.
Whatever all these self-professed "professionals" are doing, it sounds a lot more like what I did in high school: spending weeks swapping components, recompiling Linux kernels for 2% higher values at some useless benchmark, building incredibly-convoluted setups to really finally create a media centre rivalling Fleet Street etc.