I bought a fully specked, 2012 retina mac book pro today. Will it still be powerful in 4 years? In other words, will it still be able to handle high powered engineering programs in 4 years?

Question

In other words, will it still be able to handle high powered engineering programs in 4 years? It's i7, quad core, 2.7GHZ boost up to 3.7GHZ,16 GB RAM, and 768 flash SSD.
Will it be considered a lower powered or mid powered machine in 4 years relative to the new laptops around it?
I feel like fully specking it helps me be a little future proof.
Is 6 years too ambitious to hope for that this machine will still be able to handle powerful programs?
I spent $3000 so in 4 years I hope it will still be relativley fast.

Answer 1

Nobody can predict what programs might need in the future.  And, nobody can predict where computers will head 3-4 years from now.  Power (meaning energy consumption) is becoming as important as speed (if not more so).  Purchase what you need now with a bit of headroom and expect that you might need to replace in 3 years (that's the reason large companies lease computers instead of purchasing them).
It also depends on what you mean by "high powered engineering programs".  It could mean that  you don't have enough memory for newer applications and will constantly be swapping to disk.  This could either prevent you from using the SW or will significantly slow things down.
It could also mean that the computations become more complex and need a faster cpu (this is a lower risk and simply means that your computer won't be quite as fast as your buddy's).
It could mean that the OS you have today is obsolete and no longer supported for these applications.
Don't worry about 4 years down the road.  Nobody (and I mean nobody) can predict even 1 year out.  Look at how many times companies delay product introductions, or provide "guidance" to analysts.