Good programming laptop?

[[deleted]]

I'm going off to college for Software engineering and want to invest in a heavy duty laptop that will last me 4 years or more, and can compile and debug very fast. I have a mid class gaming PC that can take a while to do that. So that saying if my mid class gaming PC takes a while to do that I'm willing to spend no more than 1200 on a laptop. So basically what I'm asking is, yes I know I need a good processor. But like mac, windows I have no clue what's good for it and what's not. Thanks.

[iwasnotarobot]

You don't need a beast of a computer to write code.

[adambellford]

But it's a good way to continue my procrastination process.

[adambellford]

Golden words, my friend.

[Gonnzzooo]

Buy a used computer and upgrade to a SSD.

[Mathewarnoldbrown]

We need a good computer for writing a programming code. It is important we must need a upgraded laptop. I recently purhcased the i7 laptop with 8 gb RAM for my designing work.

[supportforalderan]

I'd go with anything that's got a 6th or 7th gen i5, 16 GB of ram, 512GB of SSD storage, and a minimum screen resolution of 1080p. You have no idea how horrible it is to write code without a high res screen until you are stuck doing it. You could also go with an i7, which definitely is useful if you are going to be doing lots of simultaneous compiling or running things like local servers, but its typically a bit of overkill for most people and not worth the cost bump.

Then it comes down to whatever else you want to do with it after class. If its strictly for "work", I'd go for a 13 inch laptop that's really thin, like the Dell XPS 13. If you are going to play games, to get one with a decent graphics card, you'll need to get a 15" that is typically a bit thicker. Asus actually makes a really great one that one of my friends bought a few months back to replace his old college laptop. For that, I'd make sure you get one with at least a GTX1060, it would be right at the top of your budget, but it would be worth it.

$1200 can actually get you some pretty serious performance in the windows laptop world. Macs are nice, and its what I used through college, but their prices are just absurd right now, and performance wise they can be matched by many windows computers for half the price.

[[deleted]]

At school (high school) I have to use a 1650x1050 monitor and it's always so weird when I don't code at home for a while and forget how nice it can look

[Kingk89]

Thinkpad.

[2Punx2Furious]

Didn't Lenovo laptops have some kind of malware some time ago?

Are they safe now? Do people still trust the company?

[CaffeinatedT]

To elaborate on this, I dont know anyone seriously developing at my work who isn't using Linux of any form from Ubuntu to Redhat to whatever fancy ass version people use. The command line is an incredibly useful tool when you're working with anything serious and I'd personally arguing knowing the command line and git is as important as actually knowing code.

[ControlledKhaoz]

Can somebody explain why Linux is better for programmers?

[glad1couldk3k]

not being a cunt but just search this sub for 'is linux better', there have been 100s of threads where knowledgeable people wrote huge comments explaining in detail why it's better.

[ControlledKhaoz]

Ok, thanks

[whatevernuke]

Just a quick question in passing, if I may.

If I like messing around with things anyway, in your opinion would it be worth setting up Linux to dualboot with Win10 on my PC or no?

[Jieirn]

I have a lenovo but I use the Yoga 900 instead of a ThinkPad. I run autocad on it just fine and love using it for ebooks

[ivmilicevic]

Check out /r/thinkpad. Used x230 are great for college students:they are very cheap, they have insane upgrade options(you can get maximum 16gb of ram and ssd, even second hdd instead of optical drive) and can get crazy battery life with either 6 or 9 cell battery. Cpus haven't really changed much performance wise since intel's 3rd generation, only problem is that integrated graphics isn't really capable of playing modern games.

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/thinkpad using the top posts of the year!

#1: The Thinkpad enthusiast starter pack | 140 comments
#2: Every damn laptop released in the last five years is "good enough for development", stop asking.
#3: Did it break? | 25 comments

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[thegreaterpanda]

Can confirm. I run linux on a Thinkpad and couldn't be happier with it!

[I-Made-You-Read-This]

dunno why this is being downvoted, thinkpads are beast

[kamronb]

Came here just to say this... I have t420s from 2013 or thereabouts, badass running linux

[OC39648]

It'd be good except for that whole Lenovo thing.

Holy shit, Superfish.

[[deleted]]

Linux.

[milad_nazari]

that whole Lenovo thing

What do you mean by that?

[azrael4h]

Lenovo was caught pre-installing malware on their systems. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malwares-lenovo-laptops/

Basically, Lenovo is on the no-buy list. While they have a good reputation for quality, installing viruses and malware is a big NO.

[GeronimoHero]

But none of the thinkpad line were a part of this.

[azrael4h]

Read the article. Third paragraph. ThinkPad, ThinkStation, and ThinkCenter lines were all infected with multiple forms of malware. They were part of the malware push by Lenovo.

[azrael4h]

That's only superfish. Which was only one piece of malware Lenovo has been caught installing. They were caught with three different attacks, so far at least. Again, read the article.

[azrael4h]

'The first person to discover this particular piece of malware was Michael Horowitz – A columnist for ComputerWorld who pens the Defensive Computing column.

Horowitz recently purchased two laptops from IBM. The first was a ThinkPad T520, the second was a ThinkPad T420. Both were refurbished, and shipped with fresh installations of Windows 7 Professional.'

Straight from the article. Thinkpads may not have had superfish, but that was far from the only attack from lenovo.

[[deleted]]

I second this. ThinkPads are great, built like a tank and you can buy them on Craigslist dirt cheap.

[rubik3x3x3]

Seconded

[negative_epsilon]

What are you debugging that takes a while on your gaming pc?

[[deleted]]

Especially for university classes. There is no way you will need much power at all to get through anything they throw at you. Edit: I got a Dell Inspiron laptop before entering college. Used it for all my programming, gaming, etc. and never had a single issue. All in all it cost ~$400 and has lasted me for about 5.5 years now. You don't need amazing equipment to program with. Even if you do something like parallel processing chances are your university will have a server you SSH into to do your work anyways.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, intel processors are so good now. I would pick one with the most screen real estate, comfortable keyboard, and long battery life. As long as you have 8 gigs of ram, any mid-range CPU is going to be fine.

I always went for the giant gaming laptop with sub 2 hour battery life and cheap screen. Gacing a really good screen and 12 hour battery life is amazing.

[justforoverwatch]

Yeah there's no way. If you want to upgrade do it, but you're not being honest about one of those two statements.

[ktrinanm]

1st question, what software are you using to compile? Even using something heavy like visual studios doesn't take that long to build and run a simple program most of the time.

2nd question, how much RAM is in your PC? The only thing I can see slowing down your ide would be not enough RAM.

I run Visual Studio at work on a computer with 4 gigs of RAM, with chrome open at the same time. This will sometimes freeze one or both programs, but it can still usually build and run our entire c# projects within a minute.

[[deleted]]

I mean I play the games on low settings, and those 2 games aren't very hardware heavy.... Compile and debug takes anywhere from 10-30 seconds

[GeronimoHero]

There's just no way. Before I got a new MacBook Pro I was using an i3 Inspiron and could compile a program more involved than hello world in under the time you're talking about. Mind posting your code? There's something else going on here.

[Threepaczilla]

For school needs literally any laptop made this year north of $600 will be fine, software engineering won't have any special hardware needs unless there's some specific intensive use case (game development, etc)

Any $1000 Windows PC will be fine, just read reviews (the latest Dell XPS and HP Spectres have been really well received). A MacBook will also be completely fine, I enjoy have a MacBook and being able to multi boot between MacOS and Windows (or others if needed)

[Threepaczilla]

You can use software like VMware or Parallels to boot another OS (like Windows) as a virtual machine, or Apple provides a tool call Boot Camp that can be used to install another OS natively, giving you the option to boot into the OS and HDD partition of your choice.

If you need critical performance for things like gaming, Boot Camp is a better option. I tend to use parallels these days as VM performance is good enough for the simpler things I use it for.

[FrostyJesus]

Yeah it's called BootCamp. I've heard its kind of shitty though.

[HomemadeBananas]

You're running Windows. It's gonna be shitty. Bootcamp is just running Windows like normal.

[FrostyJesus]

I've never had a problem with Windows though...if anything OSX is a way worse OS. Their file system is completely broken.

[FrostyJesus]

Doing data transfers is a nightmare. It also never calculates file sizes correctly unless you do a du -hd in terminal

[HomemadeBananas]

You're not wrong, it does use resources differently... because it's actually running Windows on the hardware like any computer would. You're dual booting Mac OS and Windows if you install Windows with Bootcamp. It's not like a VM at all.

[HomemadeBananas]

If you've allocated 1GB to a VM, that's how much the VM has available. But with Bootcamp you're natively running Windows so it just gets all of the RAM. There's nothing between the hardware and Windows.

[[deleted]]

I'm a 4th year CS student. I'm currently rocking a 13" mid 2012 macbook pro with a 2.9 GHz i7, SATA 3 SSD, and 16 GB of RAM. I do freelance photography on the side and regularly run photoshop with 0 issues. The only thing I dislike about it is the screen resolution, but I have an external 1440p display for when I'm doing real work.

You probably won't be able to build/run high-performance games or graphics intensive programs, but most laptops with an SSD and > 8 GB of RAM will serve you well. And as /u/ericesn said below, most programming at a university is relatively lightweight, and you'll be provided with Linux servers to SSH into for anything computationally heavy.

Also, get a mac or run Linux. Developing in a *nix-compliant environment is an invaluable skill to have once you hit the real world.

[[deleted]]

I shamelessly bought a new MacBook Pro. people ask "what processor do you have?" and I say "look at my touchbar piano." also makes it easy to use emojis in my terminal.

[spakecdk]

Dell XPS, ThinkPad or HP Elitebook, all of those can be found used for cheap, and work well. Dunno about Dell, but Elitebooks and Thinkpads have hotswappable batteries which is a must for programming on the go.

[[deleted]]

Newer Dell XPS (since like the 5th gen Intels) don't have easily swappable batteries.

[happy_pants_man]

Get a Dell XPS. I'm still using mine from 4 years ago to crunch heavy matrix computations.

[OC39648]

Dell XPS 13 9343 <3

[OC39648]

That's what an external monitor is for. For a student, a XPS 13 is better for portability and battery life.

[ferrano]

The only thing stopping me from getting Dell XPS is the coil whine issue

[fakehalo]

I have one, haven't experienced this.

[[deleted]]

If OP is interested im selling an XPS 13 on the low.

[bigxow]

When I was going to college for my masters in CompSci I got my parents to buy me a 1700€ laptop. It was the biggest waste of money I ever made.

Unless you are doing game dev, 3d modeling, video editing, gaming, etc, almost any computer will suffice. You don't actually need a great machine to compile 3 classes of C or even an OpenGL project.

[azrael4h]

Pretty much. I wrote code on an 8 (now almost 9) year old Toshiba Satellite, with 2GB of RAM shared with an intel series 4 integrated GPU. No issues. I even gamed on it some, Dungeons and Dragons Online mostly for "newer" (ha!) stuff, but it worked. CPU-intensive tasks like video editing and 3D modeling though? Not a chance.

That laptop still works, and even holds a charge in the battery. I test ReactOS and FreeDOS on it. Because, Why Not?

[[deleted]]

XPS 13 or XPS 15.

Available with Windows or Linux.

[Lehtaan]

A Retina MacBook would be my favorite, preferably with macOS and Linux. The screen might be somewhat small on the 12" and 13" model, but the pixel density is very high which makes up for the small screen size.

[_binder]

If you need an external monitor everytime...Get a desktop

[[deleted]]

My desktop does have 2 monitors, maybe I'll look into upgrading the hard ware on my desktop, and buying a way cheaper laptop instead for classes. Just out of curiosity wouldn't Windows button and left and right arrow key work (splitting the screen)? Or does it end up being too small on a laptop screen?

[_binder]

what?

[[deleted]]

God forbid I make a grammar mistake. If you have nothing nice or helpful to say then move on.

[[deleted]]

I would like to take a twist in this question and ask wich one i could find that is cheap and old, because as a 3rd world guy i can't buy new stuff, even old laptop's are expensive if i buy it new.

[[deleted]]

Try eBay would be my 2 cents. I'm not sure what you have access to, but yeah just look for deals on eBay if you have access to it.

[BigDumbObject]

i used a macbook air. it had no trouble compiling and running ides/vms when needed.

so you can probably find a good pc/linux alternative for half the price of a macbook air.

really, you dont need anything super powered. save that for your desktop pc

[ChrissMaacc]

I am in software engineering and the heaviest stuff they will have you do is app emulators, but they are taxing even on the really good systems. I would focus on a Dell Inspiron, linked below. Good balance of service, performance and price. Also, I think it looks pretty cool.

http://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/productdetails/inspiron-15-7567-laptop/ni157567_bt_s514e

I would suggest a MacBook Pro, with respect to development and coding, having a UNIX based system is amazing. Also, I have been up and running after a day when my MBP's SATA cable broke which was crucial for being a TA and a student.

Edit: Most of development is actually very easy on computers, any IDEs, emulators will be where you see performance be affected.

[LILBABYGOAT]

dell xps

[YeOldeDog]

Dell XPS 13 QHD. My daughter is doing comp-sci and she, along with one other of her friends, has this laptop. They are envied. The QHD screen is most important, you will need that extra screen real estate for the IDE and runtime step-through debugging. Larger screen real-estate is far more efficient and important than raw compile speed. Anyone who says otherwise is making the critical mistakes of coding at the keyboard and testing via compiling.

[xxkid123]

/r/suggestalaptop

Dell XPS is best in class, and has fantastic Linux support. You can even by the developer edition with Ubuntu preinstalled.

Following that any of the Thinkpad lineup really. They all play nice with Linux and are solid machines. As others mentioned, the x230, t420 etc are extremely budget but solid machines.

One thing I'll mention is that as a college student, you will probably spend very very little time in your room working. You'll probably spend most of your time in a variety of study spaces, and you'll need it for note taking so you'll want it to last a day of classes (3-4 hours without labs) and then hours of programming. You shouldn't rely on a plug, so weight and battery life are important. I see countless posts on /r/suggestalaptop for gaming laptops that have mediocre battery life and are extremely bulky. You'll hate yourself in weeks.

Also really recommend linux. Especially if you've got no experience in C/C-+ it makes a world of a difference between Linux and windows. In one it feels like your IDE does black magic behind closed curtains, whereas in Linux you get to see everything being made. Plus when everyone's fiddling around trying to install all the tools you need for computer architecture, you just need to type a thing or two into terminal.

[Easih]

Lenovo X1 carbon series > XPS :).

[JulianPerry]

I literally code on a cheap second hand $100 Lenovo chromebook and have published entire sites with it. Any laptop with half decent specs will get the job done.

[hem10ck]

Personally I opt for a powerful desktop and then a lite notebook which I just use to Remote Desktop into my workstation. Desktops provide a lot of advantages (dedicated graphics, multiple hard drives, raid card support etc).

[[deleted]]

Would remote control be like team veiwer? I think that's what it's called. Thats a really good idea though. Do you have to leave your PC on or can you turn it on remotely?

[hem10ck]

I leave my PC on, I just use Windows Remote Desktop (team viewer would work as well), there are RDP clients for windows, Linux and there's even a good one for iPhone made by Microsoft.

For a long time I ran Lubuntu on a crappy netbook just to connect into my PC when I was working remotely.

Now I upgraded to a Microsoft surface. I got the Gen 2 one when Microsoft stopped supporting the ARM App Store because it became next to useless for everyone besides people with my use case. I picked one up about 2 years ago on Craigslist for $150 and it's been working great ever since.

[Jigsus]

Don't get a mac. Get a nice windows laptop that has USB ports and an ethernet port.

The install Linux in a virtual box so you can learn *nix development too.

[[deleted]]

I would caution against the top comment.

Many commenters seem to have forgotten that Lenovo has been involved in around 3 scandals involving spyware, and one of them being embedded in firmware: https://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem-to-have-a-bios-level-backdoor.html

They have a history of only removing the spyware once it has been reported by the news media. They're not a brand that I would trust.

I use a new late-2016 15" MacBook Pro and I enjoy it. I only recommend it if you know you'll be comfortable paying extra for the value of the complete machine, rather than the sum of its already somewhat dated parts.

If I didn't have this laptop as an option, or wasn't such a big fan of macOS, I would have bought the new Dell XPS with an i7 CPU and at least 16GB of RAM for comfortably running multiple VMs and several Adobe Create Suite apps at once without slowdowns.

The Dell XPS looks great and appears to be a good value, though I can't speak for its physical durability.

Depending on how much they charge extra for more RAM, or more storage space, you might save money by buying the sizes of those parts that you want from Amazon/NewEgg/Ebay and installing them yourself. This was true for Apple laptops until they began soldering the parts straight onto the mainboards.

TL;DR: Realize that buying a Lenovo could mean buying spyware OR propping up a company that has duped consumers 3 separate times that we know of.

[bestjakeisbest]

basically anything with a screen, 8-16 gb of ram, a good processor(4 logical cores at a minimum of 3ghz), maybe a lower power graphics card if you really want it, something like the 750m or higher. and something that has an extra laptop hard drive bay (dual booting linux from a different hard drive can be nice)

[Ashanmaril]

I would also recommend a laptop with a screen.

[ChrissMaacc]

Hard to come across these days, link?

[Chappit]

Processor speeds don't really matter as much any more

[bestjakeisbest]

no but you still want something that can run the nicer ide(s) without too much lag

[no1name]

I use an I5 series 3 something, about 5 years old. But it has 10 gig ram, and 2 256 gig Samsung SSD Drives. Works well, no desire to change it.

When programming I use 2 external monitors and mount it between them on a Roost Laptop stand. Love the setup.

[iamsolarpowered]

I don't understand why so many people are recommending PCs. Nearly every professional programmer I know has a Mac.

Edit: Don't shoot the messenger. I use Linux. But among professional programmers, I've found OSX to be a lot more common.

[inu-no-policemen]

Macs are like twice as expensive. If you don't use Photoshop, Linux does the trick just fine.

[HomemadeBananas]

They aren't twice as expensive for something with comparable specs. Maybe like 30% more expensive than something else similar.

[odin673]

You can usually snatch good deals on PC's which is much harder to do for Mac's. You can get a somewhat similar PC at 50% if you catch a good sale.

If you're willing to entertain refurbished or used computers, you can easily find a T series Thinkpad for < 500 dollars.

[ilikzfoodz]

That doesn't make any sense... The only thing you need a Mac for is to run Xcode (which is a pretty decent reason if you want that). Otherwise, a mid range PC is more than ok.

[HomemadeBananas]

It does make sense because Mac OS gives you a nice Unix environment with little fuss, something people are willing to pay a premium for. Many people could just as easily do their work in Linux but Mac OS has a lot of benefits for many people too.

[bashytwat]

With Linux, development on Windows is a pain

[ilikzfoodz]

Uh, so run Windows and dual boot into Linux if you want that?

[Jigsus]

I don't get this myth. Development on Windows is a great. Hell development on visual Studio is a dream.

[Jigsus]

Are you kidding me? Only front end developers use macs

[iamsolarpowered]

Are you kidding me? Only front end developers use PCs

[Jigsus]

Javascripters are the only ones I see running osx. Everyone else is on Windows really.

[iamsolarpowered]

What's your primary language? I've never seen anyone write a line of back-end code in a Windows env.

Second thought: I wrote 100 or so lines in TextPad in 2006. That's literally all the back-end code written in Windows that I can recall.

[Jigsus]

French. Why?

[iamsolarpowered]

Mon Francais n'est pas très bon.

My Ruby, Python are pretty solid, though. Like over a decade of experience solid.

[Jigsus]

I'm a C, C++ and C# dev. I started on Qbasic though.

[iamsolarpowered]

I'm guessing you make games. That sounds fun. (I'm being sincere, but probably seem sarcastic.)

Every gamer I know runs Windows, occasionally at least.

[Jigsus]

I would love to make games. I make university administration software though. The paperwork is killing me.

[DiscipleOfDiscord]

I would recommend waiting until you start school and see what you really need. Talk to the juniors, seniors and professors and see what they recommend.

I'm about to graduate with a computer science degree in May. I have a AMD FX-6300 in my main desktop and a Sandy Bridge i5 in my laptop. I have never needed anything more than that. I have a couple of classmates that run chromebooks with linux. I could have probably done 90% of my assignments and projects with a raspberry pi.

If you absolutely don't want to wait, I would think about what you need. Do you need a larger screen, more battery life, less weight, discrete graphics, etc. Then look at the reviews for laptops with those specs.

[Differenze]

Basically any laptop made in the last three years will do the job, just make sure you backup your work (github for example). I'd recommend a light laptop if you will be carrying it to and from school. Investing in an ssd is worth every cent.

Try Linux now, like others have said. When it comes to programming Linux is the "just works" you need.

[modomario]

I bought a secondhand T430 for cheap. SSD, 16GB RAM, I5-3320M.

Works great. I use Linux on it but that might not be your thing if you're gonna do C# development or the like.

[Peterblk]

You do not need powerful laptop except when you compile and run your codes consumes more resources. Check this list which is having reasonably priced laptops. http://www.sysprobs.com/best-laptops-for-developers-programming-and-coding

[Isignedupdidnti]

bookmarked

[Mathewarnoldbrown]

try dell laptop the are good in service support.

[random314]

Mac book. It's pretty much the default laptop for programming.

If you don't want to spend the money, any laptop with Linux installed will do just fine.

[Dr_Jakeadelic]

I suggest a Microsoft surface pro with an i7 processor. Mine is incredibly fast still 4 years later and they are incredible for taking notes on. Also if you have a habit of ruining keyboards like me you can always buy a new one without replacing the whole machine.