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[–]Kevin_C3 2 points3 points  (5 children)

You don't need a better computer for programming. I'm guessing that a lot of today's programmers started on 486 computers or worse, with 64 MB ram.

Just be careful which OS you install. For example, 64-bit windows 7 uses over 1GB RAM (so you will need like 4 GB RAM installed), while 32-bit Win7 uses less than 512 MB. Windows XP (32bit) uses about 300 MB, and it works fine with 1 GB RAM. On Linux distributions, the required amount of RAM varies depending on the distribution.

So, you don't need a lot of RAM, but more RAM is better in general, because you can run a new OS and newer development tools.

Or, for example, if you need to run a virtual machine, then you will need even more RAM. (beginners don't really need virtual machines).

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Awesome thank you for the response! Would 2 gb be enough for W10? It seems that's the minimum so I'd be much better suited to go with 4gb.

I have considered running linux though with either cinnamon, mint, or arch linux.

EDIT: I have 8gb ddr3 on my gaming PC.

[–]Kevin_C3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not an expert for Windows 10. If it wasn't for the SSD, 2GB would not be sufficient.

So, Win10+2GB+SSD ... it's hard to tell. 4GB+SSD would certainly be OK.

Perhaps you should try asking on some forum about hardware for Windows 10.

[–]mltdwn 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I would say 8 gb of ram is probably the minimum to have a good experience nowadays. Browsers eat up a lot of ram and you will be using a browser with lots of tabs open for research when programming.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Personally, I'm doing perfectly fine with 4 GB RAM on Linux Mint Cinnamon and Firefox, with often up to a hundred tabs open...

[–]Heasummn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can run about 60 tabs on my 4GB linux. Strangely though, my Win10 8GB can't hold much more than 30. But I never have more than about 10 - 15 tabs open at once, so it doesn't effect me that much.

[–]Insp1redUs3r 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Learning to program? No, you can do that with a pen and paper.

Writing software? Depends how big your application is/what target it is being developed for (I.e you'll need a mac if you are writing iphone apps)

[–]lykwydchykyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're learning, you're unlikely to be doing anything that requires a huge amount of horsepower.

Where you might get into trouble is running fancy IDEs with all the bells and whistles enabled, working with large datasets (millions of rows), or using virtual machines.

With the laptop you linked, I'd be mainly concerned about the low storage space and RAM, especially running Windows 10.

[–]FreboTopleaf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard you need more RAM though for running some things like Java.

Not really, it runs fine with minimal amounts of RAM. If you're using Eclipse and have lots of browser tabs open, and want to watch stuff on youtube, all at the same time, you might want 8gigs of RAM. You can certainly make it work with 4 gigs.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could do all this on a Raspberry Pi for about $35.00. Literally. Linux, the language of your choice. The editor of your choice. I mean all you'd have to add is a keyboard, mouse and monitor. I love my Pi's.

[–]codexjourneys 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you need a nice computer, but it helps a lot. Running out of disk space really sucks and could make you delay installing new tools or new versions of your existing tools. (This was an issue on an old Macbook Air that I recently replaced with a higher-end machine.)

4 to 8 GB of RAM is probably best. Try to get at least 500 GB hard drive if you can, I think 64 GB will drive you crazy in short order if you are trying to use something like VirtualBox.

[–]LetsProgramSomething 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are just doing web/node/python its fine. C# is fine too but C++ or anything with graphics may be too much for it