I’ve sometimes used what I consider the minimum when I’m traveling. For me, it’s just a laptop and a good headset. The “next level” involves a secondary screen that I can use to do a bit of multitasking when I’m sharing my main laptop screen.

For longer periods, I find it helpful for some (but not all) tasks to have big monitors.

And depending on what I’m doing, I sometimes want a crunchy local machine. (Sometimes it’s enough to do remote computing, but sometimes I actually need CPU power directly driving monitors to generate sophisticated graphics, etc.)

[As it happens, right now I’m working on a project I didn’t expect to work on, having to do with finding the fundamental theory of physics … and for that I have 93 local CPU cores, a very fast machine driving my large monitors, etc. But this is an unusual set of requirements for me … for a very unusual project]

At our company, I’m surprised by the number of remote developers who seem to just have powerful laptops. When I see their screens, they’ve often got very small fonts. But it’s just a laptop, not a big screen.

If you want the full be-as-productive-as-possible setup … check out the long blog I wrote about this: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/