I guess it depends what you are working with. Some things are just a pain to keep synced, like large files, lots of repos, installed packages, containers, customizations, etc..

For a while I did have an iMac at work, iMac at home and small laptop for whatever. But it was too much hassle.

So use an external HD! A 2.5" usb3 SSD will fit in your pocket. Comes with the added advantage that you save the copy step of transferring files to colleagues.

Additionally depending on OS / hardware similarity at each end you might even be able to make it bootable and carry your toolset everywhere too.

I've tried doing just that, and it's still somewhat inconvenient. There's quite a bit of stuff that resides somewhere in the $HOME dir, from config to application files. I considered symlinking part of it, but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD connected.

Install macos + your environment and data to the external drive and boot from it?

> ...but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD connected.

Dunno about you, but I'd prefer to have one top spec box than two mid spec ones (assuming you're working on a fixed budget here).

You're not going to get top spec at all in laptop formfactor if that's what matters to you.

Two decent desktops are each going to be individually more powerful than a good, expensive laptop.

But realistically we're probably not working on a fixed budget. My job is how I get almost all of my income, so I will do whatever is necessary to continue being able to do it. If that means spending more money on another computer so be it -- what that money is buying is less hassle from having to move a computer around twice a day, and reducing risk of forgetting it or not having it at the right place, as well as reducing risk of damage or theft in transit.

I don't pay for these extra computers anyway, though. I simply have two work laptops. The refresh cycle here is two years long, and the first laptop I had was a top spec 15" ~2014 gen Macbook Pro, so it's still way more than adequate. I simply didn't turn it in when I got another laptop two years later, so now I have two -- the powerful Macbook Pro at home, and a lighter Chromebook at the office I carry around and primarily use in meetings (nothing comes close to touching my monster of a workstation in performance anyway).

Partially budget, but partially because I prefer not to have to deal with syncing them. I know there are tools to help, and I also keep all of my configs in a nice dot file setup. It's relatively painless switching to my travel laptop. Nevertheless, I'd still have to change some things. Syncing won't keep app versions in sync, syncing won't keep all my system files in sync. I'd have to work entirely in synced directories, else I miss random files (like ~/Downloads, I'd have to sync that, or perhaps miss a download one day at work), etc.

It's something I do semi frequently currently and it's totally do-able, but there's enough friction that I'd rather not ever worry about it. Hell, I'd rather not have a travel laptop either, but as mentioned I don't want my high end machine to be taken with me.