Dev Stand-alone Laptop Specs

Hey guys, I’m a bit outdated when it comes to these new generations of processors so I thought I’d ask for help here.

What’s the minimum processor generation that I can get away with provided that the laptop would have its own DB server, App hosting server, and of course a coding interface and some debug tools here and there? Will be doing mostly mobile and web applications too in Java-slash-the whole Pandora’s box included with Java apps.

So far, the common theme I’ve been reading around here is to use SSD on the primary boot disk. Is it really necessary or just a huge performance boost?

Do I really need 16GB of memory?

Are Intel processors the way to go?

What’s the deal with high GPU specs? Overkill or would help too?

Thanks a million for all your inputs!