Curious to know what devRant thinks about a macbook air (newest model) with i5 and 8 gb ram for a developer.
Usage consists mainly of running jetbrains IDEs, like IDEA and CLion, maybe some front end using sublime text.
I know it would work now, but I'm curious if it would still be decent in, say, 2 or 3 years. Thanks!

I have been using a MacBook Air for the past 4 years without a problem with similar ide and text editors. I even use it for light video editing. I would say your good.

That would be great - if we were living in a perfect world.. But sadly you're mentioning apple, the IT evil of the universe.

1: Enjoy your slavery made overpriced product
2: There is absolutely no guarantee you'll be able to use that fancy macbook for that long, since they WILL make you buy a new one by simply stop support for your hardware, as they did with (perfectly fine) other mac hardware (that's intel based)