Having done lots of software development through the years, I found the opposite of what most people do to be true: if you develop using lesser equipment but extend it to its fullest, you increase compatibility and longevity rather than demanding the latest and fastest for development, which results in problems for the majority of customers, who DON'T have top-of-the-line equipment. Not that I do software-dev professionally but I suspect it's more the challenge of the thing. Getting old-school DSL to perform as if it's cable by tweaking the router and DNS, packet envelop, whatever, settings appropriately, and tweaking all the computers to run at peak performance is a satisfaction I can't describe.