The Modern Thin Client

For years, the developer community has been locked in a quiet arms race over who has the most powerful laptop. I’ve stepped off that treadmill. My setup is a modern take on the thin client, and it has made my workflow more focused, secure, and flexible.

At its heart, the principle is simple: use a lean local machine that runs only a browser, a terminal, and Visual Studio Code. The core of the work happens on a more powerful computer, which is often just another machine in my home office, accessible over the local network. I use the terminal to SSH into it, and VS Code's Remote Development to edit files directly on that remote machine. The local device becomes a high-fidelity window into a more powerful computer, and since it all runs over the intranet, my work continues uninterrupted even if the internet goes down.

This philosophy is portable. I have a Chromebook that I leave at my in-laws, perfectly set up for this. At home, my primary machine is an older MacBook Pro that runs only Chrome, Terminal, and VSCode. Both devices are just different gateways to the same powerful remote workspace.

This approach has the soul of an old-school UNIX workstation but with a modern editor. The terminal is the control center, but instead of a monochrome vi session, you get the full VSCode experience with all its extensions, running seamlessly on remote files.

A major benefit is the built-in security isolation. In a traditional setup, every script and dependency runs on the same machine as your primary browser with all its logged-in sessions. Here, there's a clear boundary: the local machine is for "trusted" tasks like browsing, while the remote machine is for "untrusted" work. A malicious script on the server cannot touch local browser data.

The most significant power, however, is the ability to scale. I've had situations where I needed parallel builds of separate branches for a resource-heavy project. A single machine couldn't handle two instances at once. With this setup, it was trivial: one VSCode window was connected to a powerful machine running the develop branch, and a second VSCode window was connected to an entirely different server running the feature branch. Each had its own dedicated resources, something impossible with a single laptop.

This model redefines the role of your laptop. It’s not about having a less capable machine, but about building a more capable and resilient system. The power is on the servers, and the local device is just a perfect, secure window into it.