I feel like with Apple's polished software, and the nimble new Architecture, this represents the next level of computing on laptops. Which necessitates, as a minimum having the M1 Pro, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD, for the longterm commitment.

For the cheaper models, like the M2, 16GB and 512GB may suffice. And the base models, with the M1, 8GB, and 256GB are well balanced. But both options are hard to recommend. Yet the first mentioned combination is also hard to recommend because it's priced so high.

Me personally, I will try to get the first mentioned combination, but get it second-hand hopefully at a more palatable budget. Having more GPU cores is on my wish list, but there's not enough applications out there taking advantage of that (yet) beyond what you're getting with the M1 Pro. If this changes in the near future, my stance would also change (to recommend the M1/M2 Max variants to take advantage of the graphical fidelity).