Benchmarks for computers suited for developers?

Discussion

I'm a developer and have been for many years, and I find LTT's coverage of various laptops pretty informative - however I wish sometimes they'd include some developer focused benchmarks such as 'this is how long this complicated Docker container takes to build' or 'this is how long this repository takes to compile' - yes these machines are used extensively by creatives but they're also used extensively by engineers and that sort of context would be really useful.

Example: I have a MacBook M3 Pro for work and my Docker stack takes about a minute or so to build from fresh - if MySQL takes X time to compile on my machine and Y time on Z computer, I can kinda judge loosely whether Z computer is better than mine.

I don't care if the M5 can play Cyberpunk, but I do care if it might be faster for my job. Even if they're flash slides to demonstrate whether there's a meaningful increase in horsepower doing the same task would be valuable.

I suppose there's a lot of variation between workloads and so on, which I understand, but some form of technical/engineering/developer focused benchmarking would be useful for a tech channel.

In addition, and I know this will be strongly disliked, but a benchmark on running LLMs would be interesting given I was astounded at how well a reasonably useful LLM can run on Mac hardware, for instance, compared to how dogshit it ran on some Windows hardware I have. They're not going away even if the bubble bursts so it is now useful consumer information...

My two pennies on the whole thing. Good video otherwise - thanks for the fan control tool, my poor Mac must be cooking itself without me realising given how desperate it is when it finally engages the fans.

Posted Apr 1, 2026, 8:19 PM UTC

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