That argument would hold more power if there wasn't an existing native client for Slack and Discord, made by one person, with all the features I needed, working with absolutely no lag and minimal resource use, working on MacOS, Linux, Windows. Unfortunately the development stopped, or I'd still use it. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago

Https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ Used it before, worked OK. Now I use Matrix, so I don't need it anymore. Neat trick: AppImages are squashfs compressed filesystems, so they can have slow startup etc. Fix this with ./app.AppImage --appimage-extract, find the binary in the created folder and run that one instead, so that you pay the decompression cost only once. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago

Not sure if it still works (or will continue to work) but this might be what you're looking for: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ I've also had fairly good results using gtkcord4, though it takes it little finagling to get up-and-running: https://github.com/diamondburned/gtkcord4. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago

There are a bunch of features in slack beyond the core chat stuff, like: 1. Being connected to multiple communities and switching between them instantly this can be of course simply replaced by connecting to different servers in a tabbed terminal and use the terminal's built-in cmd-1/2/... shortcut, which happens to be the same as in slack. 2. Meta data about others, like their timezone or how to pronounce their... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago

All three of these are web browsers (slack and vscode are built on electron) that are notoriously RAM-hungry. If you don't want to buy new hardware, switching to using the slack web-app or using a third party client like Ripcord will remove one of those browsers, and using an IDE that isn't a web browser would take out another. You may also find that another browser like Firefox uses less memory than Chrome. Source: about 1 year ago

If you’re on a budget, I would suggest Mac of All Trades and Discount Electronics. They have refurbished apple products at discounted prices. Discoune Electronics also has Windows computers. Source: about 1 year ago

One last note, I bought a MacBook Air from 2015 last year on clearance for $195 from this place. The battery is great and the only issue it had was some dings and a USB port working intermittently. Otherwise it does absolutely everything I need and is a delight to use. Buy yourself something used -- certified/refurbished, if you can -- and you'll eventually be in a position to buy yourself exactly what you want or... Source: over 1 year ago

Hey, you can get a good refurbished model from https://macofalltrades.com I bought from them. Source: over 1 year ago

You don't need anything super powerful honestly. I made the transition from Windows to Mac about halfway through my degree and thought it was way better because it's lightweight/battery life/lasted longer than my HP but you'll be fine either way. MacOS is more similar to Linux, which a lot of programmers end up using professionally. A price range would help make a precise recommendation though. macofalltrades.com... Source: over 1 year ago

You could look at macofalltrades.com or such for an older 13" MB Air. See if you can keep it to 2014 (supports Big Sur) or 2015 (supports Monterey). That could get her by for a year or two. Source: over 1 year ago