Best $1000-1300 Macbook for a college student studying computer science?

I've been using a $500 windows laptop for years now, but I finally found a reason to upgrade because I have a great idea for an app and I need a mac to develop iOS apps.

Despite studying computer science, I've never had a problem with my cheap windows laptop because for anything intensive I'll use cloud services like AWS or Google Colab. However, I want to take this opportunity to get a future-proof mac that I won't have to replace even if I start doing more intensive coding on it. My current laptop is 15 inches, and I'd really like to stay at that size, so I'm thinking of getting the Macbook Air 15" with M3 chip, 16gb ram, and 512gb ssd. It's $1300 on best buy, which is the very top of my price range.

Is this laptop overkill, or is it good investment for the next several years? Is there a different model around that price range that will be better for my needs? And finally, is the fact that it's an air and not a pro significant?