I’ve been using an M1 Air for 3 years for work although I went for more ram. No problems with overheating, ever. If you’re compiling a lot & don’t need tea breaks then a pro is probably a better bet, but if you’re doing a range of tasks that might be ram hungry an air with more ram could be a better

Also if you need high speed thunderbolt external storage then go Pro. Apple silicon based MacBooks will spend 99.9% of their time waiting for the biggest bottleneck, you!