I'm a professional systems programmer. I agree with everything you're saying, in principle.
Except I have two M1 MacBook Pros (one 16GB, one 64GB). I frankly don't notice the difference between the two on any workload. This involves compiling multiple projects, running multiple docker containers locally in virtual machines, running VS Code, Slack, Chrome, and other productivity tools.
These machines frankly feel like alien fucking technology and I don't say that lightly. I'm used to year-over-year improvements being almost unnoticeable. These machines feel like I've jumped ten or more years forward in performance and responsiveness. And they do so while barely generating heat. My previous Intel MBP would make my home office hot just by being in a Zoom call. When I first got my M1 MBP, I left it running all night performing a SIMD-heavy pure math workload pegging every core at 100%. Not only was it faster, but the room wasn't even perceptibly warmer than ambient.
I have a gaming PC next to my work area. Zen 9 3950X, GeForce 3080, 64GB of DDR-4000 RAM, and Samsung 980 Pro SSDs. The fans go blazing and I start sweating just booting Windows. And unless I'm doing something in VR, it performs comparably to the MacBook Pro. I barely turn the damn thing on these days.
Alien technology.