You probably already decided on that, but for everyone stumbling upon this post, here you can find my comparison between MBP 16" i9/64G and i7/16G for development that includes docker, some npm scripts and occasional Xcode.
tldr;
I feel no difference.
When the 16G is idling after start it takes 8GB of RAM (compared to 20GB on the higher version).
When I'm fully in the working mode (IntelliJ open, docker containers running, npm frontend bundlers + chrome tabs with devtools) I always have little spare RAM. Looks like MacOS is just being awesome in the memory management aspects.
You probably already decided on that, but for everyone stumbling upon this post, here you can find my comparison between MBP 16" i9/64G and i7/16G for development that includes docker, some npm scripts and occasional Xcode.
nowicki.io/macbook-pro-16-64g-i9-v...
tldr;
I feel no difference.
When the 16G is idling after start it takes 8GB of RAM (compared to 20GB on the higher version).
When I'm fully in the working mode (IntelliJ open, docker containers running, npm frontend bundlers + chrome tabs with devtools) I always have little spare RAM. Looks like MacOS is just being awesome in the memory management aspects.
Thanks for this – interesting read.
I wonder too if the fast SSD MBPs have mean that a bit less RAM is even less of an issue?
I'm hoping to hold out until the ARM based 16" are available and maybe the memory offering will be different then. If not 16GB might be enough.