Choosing a computer for programming

John259

Python:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
The teacher might be advising using Python because that's the programming language he knows best, which is a valid reason (to some extent). Most of the commonly used programming languages involve the same fundamental concepts but the details differ, sometimes quite considerably.

Raspberry Pi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
A nice little device for someone who is more interested in the hardware than the software, or who wants a small and inexpensive computer to control a robot, etc.

Computerphile:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile
A series of educational videos on YouTube in which university computer science professors and lecturers, and others, explain various topics and points of interest. Most of the videos are well beyond the elementary level but some might be useful, for example "Should Everyone Learn to Code?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TlYteJAwMQ

samy888

I need my laptop for work, can't risk him messing it up. Given hte opportunity he changes layouts and hides things (as a joke) google was called something random last week and he keeps editing websites. He likes to designs games to play, yesterday was a submarine game that had crazy thruster looking for a certain black box in the middle of the Indian ocean.

[Deleted User]

Sammy - the take-away from this thread is - you don't really need a high spec computer to learn programming. You might need a decent screen; but not a great one.

Don't let him persuade you that he needs a 'game playing PC' spec to learn to code and do his homework.

Cycrow

of course if he decided to get into Games Programming, then he may need a better computer in the future.

No point spending too much money to start with as u have no idea if he will actually stick with it or not, so any old pc to start learning the basics then possibly upgrading later.

There are certain type of programming that does require specific computers and cant just be done on any old computer, like iOS development.
And games development would ideally need a gaming pc.

a large screen is defiantly useful, but not required, i find multiple large monitors invaluable when coding.

unless it needs to be portable, i would defiantly go for a desktop over a laptop

Herzlos

samy888 wrote: »

Any ideas what a decent monitor should look like,
Full HD?
Size: 24" 27" or 29"?
Inputs: HDMI VGA DVI?
MHL?

Widest screen with highest resolution - most of the time he'll be looking at pages and pages of text rather than anything with fancy graphics. HDMI and DVI are the most common outputs (HDMI being the latest), so you want them.

1 monitor should be sufficient unless he starts taking it very seriously though, especially if he's using some sort of interactive development environment (IDE/IDDE). If he's using consoles he'll probably need more screen space, but wait for him to need the upgrade.

But realistically he'll be able to do all of his school/uni level assignments on any PC that still runs. We only recently decommissioned 10 year old PC's with less power than my phone, because Windows XP support stopped, but they still did the job fine (if a bit more slowly than the new ones). PC's have long since reached the point of being powerful enough for 99.9% of users (heavy video/photo editing and gaming aside).


Unless he's interested in newer PC games, just buy him the cheapest desktop PC in a catalogue and a 21" + widescreen monitor, and he'll be good to go. It's what I've been running at home for about 3 years now and whilst being a bit sluggish on some high end games, it's perfectly fine.