Perhaps many people building code do not need multiple 16x PCI-Express cards in their day to day workflow, but like being able to move around with their laptop?
For lots of workloads it is basically true, though. Not something exclusive to Apple laptops of course, others have also been capable programming workhorses for quite some years. It's just weird to say that no compiling should be done on a laptop - that might've been true 10 years ago.
