Hi guys I want to buy a laptop for programming, but I couldn’t figure out what i really want .
my budget range from 600$ to 1200 .
I found these laptops in the market
(i3 - 4g ram - 256 giga ssd) for 600$
(i5 - 8g ram - 512 giga ssd) for 800$
(i7 - 16g ram - 512 giga ssd) for 1200$
and also ryzen 3 5 and 7 .
here what I want you to Know :
1- I want to use this laptop for programming only (and browser of course),
2 - I will programming for android (for now ),that’s mean i need to install android studio , IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse (maybe other).
so I’m afraid if I buy 1200$ laptop i will regret it , because don’t need that much ram or cores or ssd capacity.
and if i buy 600$ i will regret it too ,because it will be too slow or not ideal for programming,less ram -less capacity -less core
I was depressing for long time and I’m slowly back on track so i don’t know what going on ( on tech world).
and also there are laptop 2 in 1 (laptop and tablet) with pen, is it worth to buy ?.
dose the laptop now upgrade-able in terms of ram , saying this because of what going on in part replacement issue (like apple ).
so help please what should I buy.
pardon my English not my first Language, and thanks in advance.
Edit : thank you guys very much , that’s really help and very informative. 👍 😍
Buy the cheapest MacBook model you can find with an M-series chip and as much RAM as you can stomach the cost for.
I’d say 8gb is barrrrre minimum for doing app development. You’ll want 16gb.
Listen, I’m the last person you’d expect to recommend a Mac. I am an Android guy. No other Apple products in my place.
…but I’ve owned every top end model from pretty much every relevant PC manufacturer just trying to find something as reliable, hassle free, and well built as my work Mac and it just doesn’t exist.
The MacBooks are just in a whole other class. The battery life, the standby time, the speed of those M1/2 chips, runs cool and quiet.
I’m neutral on MacOS. It tends to stay out of my way. I don’t use any of the Apple apps. It is usually stable as hell. My work MBP currently has an up time of 68 days without a reboot, and the only reason it rebooted last time was for security patches.
Build quality is unmatched, screen is great, trackpad is still a generation ahead of anything else, keyboard is great.
I accept my fate, Fediverse. Roast away
I’m not here to “roast” but M chips aren’t fully supported for everything a software engineer could be compiling/running. At the current moment, they’re not quite as well-supported in every single way possible like an x86 chip would be for dev environments (even though we all really want them to be).
Nothing wrong with recommending a Mac. I’m not a Mac guy myself but I am pretty productive with one.
The stack overflow survey showed 33% of devs are using MacOS. You won’t (or shouldn’t) be roasted for recommending a mac.
Same. I haven’t used a Mac seriously since my 2004ish G5 power mac… I’ve been on Linux pretty much exclusively for 20 years. My current job gave me a new apple silicon Macbook though and it’s almost unbelievable how good of a machine that is. I think 90% of that comes down to the chip but still… The software is still mostly just fine but the chip is in a class of its own.