Debate: Does a fast internet connection really matter for coding or is it overhyped?

I was talking with my buddy Dave last week, he's a developer too, and he swears anything under 500 Mbps is unworkable. But I've been on a 100 Mbps plan for 3 years and never noticed a slowdown except when downloading huge files. He said loading documentation pages and npm installs get way faster with higher speeds, but I feel like most of my time is spent in an editor or waiting on builds, not the internet. Now I'm second guessing my setup though. Has anyone else switched to a faster plan and actually felt a real difference in daily work, or is it just a flex?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora81310d ago

...did you catch that LTT video from a few months back where they tested latency vs bandwidth for actual work tasks? They found that even 50 Mbps was fine for most coding stuff, but high ping or jitter caused way more issues than low speed. I remember them saying npm pulls have more to do with how many small files are being fetched than raw download speed...

the_hayden10d ago

@oliviabutler tell that to my npm installs that take 20 seconds on gigabit vs 2 minutes on 100.

oliviabutler10d ago

...but I actually downgraded from gigabit to 100 Mbps last year and honestly? My day to day is basically the same. Unless you're pulling down massive repos or streaming 4K video while compiling, your editor, terminal, and browser are doing most of the heavy lifting locally. Documentation pages load instantly on 100 Mbps anyway, they're just text and some CSS, not 4K video. npm installs are bottlenecked by your CPU and disk way more than the connection speed, you can test this yourself by watching task manager during one. People love to flex their speed test results but most of that bandwidth just sits unused while you're staring at a blinking cursor.