Tbh seeing your ThinkPad literally smoke is a mood... mine basically gave up last semester too. I was looking at the Dell XPS 14 2024 Intel Core Ultra 7 16GB RAM 512GB SSD and honestly it was such a letdown. Like you said, the heat is actually insane and the battery life is just a joke for a laptop that costs that much. I tried the MacBook route too but it’s such a headache when a professor hands you some x86 assembly code and you're just sitting there with your M3 chip feeling stuck. It really sucks that the premium stuff is so hit or miss lately. If you've got 1500 bucks you definitely shouldn't settle for 16GB RAM. 16GB is kind of a trap nowadays especially with Docker and Chrome eating everything. I ended up getting the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA402 14 inch 16GB RAM RTX 4060 and then just shoved an extra stick of RAM in myself to save money. It’s way better than the overpriced stuff and the screen is actually gorgeous. If you want something that feels more professional and less gamer-y tho maybe look at the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 14 inch AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS 16GB RAM. Unfortunately the build quality on some of these newer mainstream laptops just isnt what it used to be. Stick to something with a dedicated GPU and upgradeable RAM if you can... definitely check for open-box deals at Best Buy because you can usually snag a 32GB setup for way under your budget that way. Just dont forget to buy a decent cooling pad if you're gonna be compiling huge projects.

To add to the point above: just get the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 32GB RAM. It stays cool under heavy compiling and handles virtualization better than thin ultrabooks for around $1300.

I totally agree with the heat complaints mentioned above, it basically makes some thin designs unusable for long labs. My previous machine only had 16GB and it struggled immensely once I started running local Docker instances and a VM. Looking back, Id be very cautious about anything you cant upgrade later tho... 32GB really is the standard for CS work now.