Cinebench is a benchmark program. Unless you are a person (like EugW) who loves routinely running benchmarks, creating fancy graphs about benchmarks and discussing benchmarks, forget Cinebench. This is like measuring how much horsepower your car has.
I don't think the CPU speed matters that much for the MacBook 2017 because of the thermal throttling that kicks in for prolonged processes. I have the maxed out i7 and I doubt if I get much more than 10% more than the entry level CPU.
The MacBook's thermal throttling is significant. I transcoded video on my rMB 2017 and my MacBook Air 2013; the four year old computer was about 10% faster in processing the video. That's a real world task, not some benchmark.
And since you're coding in a scripted language and not compiling, you really don't need have any special CPU requirements. Just buy whatever MacBook you want based on RAM and storage.
Best of luck.
Actually, the benchmarks are quite telling IMO. The throttling of these machines happens at a much higher level than in previous years, and the non-throttled performance is also much higher than in previous years. This is easily reflected in the feel of the machines. The 2015 feels noticeably slower in comparison.
In contrast, the i7 doesn't seem to have much that much performance advantage over the m3 in 2017, either at initial runs or after extended usage, so the advantage would be far less noticeable for the 2017 i7 vs 2017 m3 vs the 2017 m3 vs the 2015 m3.
But yeah, if there are no extended compiling sessions necessary, then the m3 may be fine. However, if this were my only machine, and the machine I use to make money, I'd probably get a MacBook Pro instead. But then again, I'd also probably get a 4K monitor too, and the MBP would drive that much better. I don't have a 4K screen hooked up to my MacBook, but there are several reports out there that the MacBook struggles with that. Furthermore, by default, it will only run at 30 Hz. There are special things you have to do/get to make it run at 4Kp60. OP, are you really wanting to forego 4K?
Once you have used a Retina screen, decent sized 2K monitors don't look great. But then again I'm biased by knowing what I'm missing. I run an iMac 27" Retina with an iMac 27" non-Retina as an external monitor, and the difference is totally obvious and the non-Retina can be quite irritating. The way I compensate is to run less Retina-critical stuff on the non-Retina monitor, like banking webpages for example.
The other factor is how portable you really need it to be. I love having a 2 lb MacBook, but my main machine is as mentioned a dual 27" screen iMac. I don't need big horsepower in my portable. Furthermore, the single port on the MacBook is irritating. You need specific dongles just to be able to run a monitor and charge the machine at the same time. And some people have issues trying to run a monitor and a USB drive at the same time, not to mention charging on top of that. For me that's not an issue because I don't use an external monitor with my MacBook.
And finally, the MacBook's keyboard and TouchPad are just merely OK. The keyboard and TouchPad on the MacBook are noticeably better. This may be important to you as a coder. I suggest you try them out in person.
EDIT:
You say second computer. Would you do most of your work on your other computer, and just occasional stuff and on the road on the MacBook? Then the m3 may be fine. But factor that against what I've mentioned above.
For me the m3 MacBook works, but I value portability more than average. Most of my colleagues though went with MacBook Pros, since the laptops ends up being their main machine most of the time.
