"Programmers with fast computers write slow code" has been my justification for always buying a cheap shitty laptop, and my excuse for still not having a SSD...

Similarly: "Programmers with reliable Internet connections write unreliable code."

Silicon Valley's obsession with high-powered boutique notebooks and the high-frequency replacement cycle of Apple products is in part why so much software that comes from the region is inaccessibly slow.

That said, I'm fine with folks using top of the line computers for developing, just not for testing. Nothing will frustrate you more than attempting to use an IDE on a memory and CPU starved system with a spinning rust drive. Nothing prompts you to silly shortcuts more than having a minute plus code/build/test cycle.

But once the coding is done, pull out that netbook from 2012 and make it run fast on that platform.

When I run it through a minifier, optimize a few things, remove the debugging code, and run it on a "recommended" spec device, things run so much faster, and it's nice. It gives a nice feeling of accomplishment in addition to the other benefits.

It also lets us say no to UI features that would run too slowly early on instead of wasting time on trying to get them running on the lower spec hardware.