Totally get the feeling. My dad handed down a corded saw from the 90s and it still cuts like a dream, so I have watched guys with shiny new battery tools get quiet after trying it. There is something about having full power all the time that a battery just cannot match, and you do not have to think about charge left or swapping packs halfway through a cut. Cordless is nice for quick jobs up on a roof or out in the yard, but for real work at a bench the cord wins every time. Your neighbor going quiet says it all.

Commit timing matters way less than where those commits actually go. Beginners hear "commit often" and end up with 50 saves sitting on the same dying laptop, which is useless when the drive fries. The real habit is pushing to a remote, like GitHub, so the code lives somewhere other than the machine that can die on you. Every hour or every save doesn't matter much as long as it leaves the laptop.