I have a few hours of downtime at work/school. I want to use these hours productively learning code and building stuff with what I learn. My focus is Ruby on Rails.
What laptop do you use? Would you use? Which programs/applications?
Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
1–10 of 12 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#2MacBook Air, Sublime Text.
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#3If RubyMine is anywhere near as good as PyCharm, I'd say give that a try. It has really opened up my knowledge of Django by letting me easily navigate code. I'm using an older Dell Latitude 15 inch notebook running xubuntu, which is working very well for me after I upgraded the RAM and put in a solid state hard drive.
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#4I have two options fo ron the go. Depending on how heavy I travel these are: Thinkpad T61 or Packard Bell dot-s netbook.
Both run archlinux with i3 as window manager so I usually don't really notice perforamnce issues on the netbook.
For an editor I was always a fan of vim but I recommend using what you are comfortable with. IDEs like Eclipse are nice but if performance is at a premium I recommend jsut sticking to an editor and a shell.
Version control i would recommend git.
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#5Ubuntu, Sublime text, Terminator
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#6Your Laptop doesn't really matter too much overall, neither does your text editor to an extent. I would just use what find comfortable as a beginner and you'll naturally discover what you like/dislike. Sublime Text is a good place to start for an editor if your looking.
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#7I'm in a similar situation and after much research I just got a refurb 2013 13" MacBook Air. The only difference between the 2014 Airs is 0.1 GHz (and a couple hundred dollars).
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#8Thinkpad. Fedora (DVD version which includes preinstalled git, svn, eclipse, python, jdk etc).
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#9I'm in a similar situation and after much research I just got a refurb 2013 13" MacBook Air. The only difference between the 2014 Airs is 0.1 GHz (and a couple hundred dollars).
The macs from the refurbished part of the Apple store are great deals, but please stop telling people. They already sell out quickly, and the prices will only go up.
Re: Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?
#10I'm in a similar situation and after much research I just got a refurb 2013 13" MacBook Air. The only difference between the 2014 Airs is 0.1 GHz (and a couple hundred dollars).
Thanks for the tip. I was just on the verge of purchasing a MBP and went through this path instead. I saved about 15% off the price of a new one.