In a similar vein: "Why are you using a Mac for development in the first place unless you have to develop software for Apple devices? Why not run Linux if everything you write runs on Linux servers?"
Your post reads less like a sincere question and more like "you should be doing it this way unless you can defend your position". Maybe--just maybe--people weigh up tradeoffs differently than you do personally.
FWIW 'on the move' can mean going into a meeting room or even just walking over to a coworker's desk with your computer. Desktops kinda suck when you work around humans who don't just stare at their screens with cans on all day.
You've touched on something that irks me to no end — the tendency of many Elite Coder Bros to say things like, "Didn't you see my enormous headphones on?! Can't you see I'm coding — don't you realize I think for a living?!"
Yeah, dude, we're all thinking. As a hands-on programmer-manager I can report that creating slides for the fundraising deck that'll raise money to pay you or writing that email about you taking bags of beef jerky home for your post-workout recovery meal can take as much sustained concentration as you spinning in your `while 1 { copy_compiler_error(); stack_overflow_it(); paste_code(); }` infinite loop.
I tend to get given large projects to do. I'm fairly senior, and once we've got past the brainstorming stage, the ideas have flowed forth, and the direction is, if not clear, then at least aspirational, I often get given the job of breaking ground.
Here's how I think.
I model interaction between distinct parts. I have a mental model of how X fits with Y, how X can affect Y, and how Y can in turn affect X. I'm not doing it with just X and Y, I painstakingly build this mental model[1] over as much of the problem space as I can, and having done this for many years now, I can cover a fair amount of ground before the complexity gets beyond my ability to model. It takes a while to create this, and then when some middle-management type wanders along, taps me on the shoulder and disturbs the concentration, and it all comes crashing down around me, I am less than best-pleased. Bonus points if it's just to "touch base" or "remember we have a meeting in 2 hours time", or ... you get the picture.
Why do I expend this enormous mental effort to gain such a fragile and ephemeral state ? Because I can mentally throw boundary conditions at it and "see" how things will react. It's how I deal with inherent complexity of large systems, and a couple of hours of mental effort can prevent me spending a week coding down a dead-end path. It's happened often enough now that even my line management understand it's worth the time - there's been plenty-a-meeting where I go in and say "yeah, I know we wanted to do <insert X> but I think there's a problem when Y and Z come into play under conditions A, B and C. I think <insert option gamma> is a better route even though we didn't think so at first".
Sometimes you really do just need to be able to be left alone and think. As someone who used to own the company before he sold it, and who's done pitches to VC's and other investors, I can quite categorically state that (for me), the slides, presentations, and client management is nowhere near the level of mental investment. Nowhere near.
Just my $0.02
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[1] It's not visual, I have aphantasia, it's more firing-condition-based.
My wife and I discus this all the time. Not all jobs require the same level of thought. Her work involves a lot of mechanical movement, practice, skill, talent, and some thinking. But most of her day to day can be done listening to a podcast like she's driving.
I can't do that.
So no,
We're not "all thinking", some tasks require deep thought and long periods of uninterrupted concentration.
The problem is working in a team requires communication, and management of interruption, it is not useful to be like this dick with the headphones on, that creates barriers (the attitude, not the headphones) to communication.
I do think it makes little sense and it’s a message board, sometimes things will be said directly. If a preference is not rational and has negative consequences then it’s worth challenging. Who knows, maybe somebody will realize that squinting at the text on a 13-in screen while looking down and having their hands in unnatural positions for many hours each day is not great for them. I never said that you can’t have a laptop to take with you. I’m talking about development like the OP was - where things like compile times matter and where you can very likely remotely access your desktop if you want to show things to others.
Much of the development world has moved to laptops, docks for ergonomic desktop use, and cloud compute for when beefier hardware is needed. As a developer, I haven't used a desktop machine either at work or at home in well over a decade.
Sorry to hear that. I tried to use a top-of-the-line 2019 MacBook Pro for some development while on the road and it doesn’t come close to a desktop, even when it’s augmented with external monitors, etc.
“Compared to the desktop (sitting), tablet and laptop use resulted in increased neck flexion (mean difference tablet 16.92°, 95% CI 12.79-21.04; laptop 10.92, 7.86-13.97, P < 0.001) and shoulder elevation (right; tablet 10.29, 5.27-15.11; laptop 7.36, 3.72-11.01, P < 0.001).”
“These findings suggest that using a tablet or laptop may increase neck flexion, potentially increasing posture strain.”
Ever want to code on the couch? Not everyone wants to spend all day sitting on a gaming chair in the man cave illuminated by the light of their LED desktop enclosure
Your post reads less like a sincere question and more like "you should be doing it this way unless you can defend your position". Maybe--just maybe--people weigh up tradeoffs differently than you do personally.
FWIW 'on the move' can mean going into a meeting room or even just walking over to a coworker's desk with your computer. Desktops kinda suck when you work around humans who don't just stare at their screens with cans on all day.