I usually max out my machines with as much processing power and RAM as possible. They last a lot longer than way. (And usually cause aggravation and wasted time, to boot.)

My current computer is a M1 Max with 64GB RAM and it's still going strong. As such, I haven't been tempted by the M2, M3, nor even, at the moment, with the M4.

I also haven't been obsoleted by the steadily increasing processing and RAM requirements needed by Xcode, Apple Intelligence, Predictive Code Completion, and so on.

During the day I'm coding in Xcode, of course. Have multiple Terminal windows and SourceTree running. Have dozens upon dozens of Safari windows and tabs going. Using Mail and Calendar and Slack and Zoom. Pop into Confluence and Jira. Often running Word and even Photoshop.

In other words, I typically need all of the memory I can get. 8GB is nowhere near enough. 16GB isn't enough.

I can buy something that's going to cost more, but last longer, or I can buy something cheaper that I'm going to need to replace sooner. If not every other year.

It's a professional tool. Why skimp?