Ask HN: Any recommendations for an inexpensive developer machine?

Does he care if it is a desktop or laptop? Is he okay with Linux or does he need Windows?

I would recommend thinkpads. You can find reasonably specked thinkpad on ebay.

In our community this organization builds quality desktop computers, often with used components.

https://ithacareuse.org/ecenter/

If there is something like that in your town you might try that.

As others have pointed out using a used laptop or desktop computer is the cheapest option.

For several years my favorite was Chromebook Acer AC720 with Linux installed, it was a beautiful light weight machine.

So a Chromebook where you can install Linux is a good option for me. I would select the one I can buy from this list:

https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility

Easily M1 macbook air. If by cheap you mean 1k USD, which I think that laptop is at that price

HP business desktops, or probooj laptops, are a good buy on eBay. I've using them for dev for 10 years

Microsoft laptops generally have very good build quality for their price point, and they also offer student discounts like Apple does.

My wife is a die-hard ThinkPad user, and we've found over the years that unless you buy the expensive business-oriented ones they are, at best, not impressive.

If the budget is less than $1000, you probably want to go with a used machine, a Microsoft machine, or a Chromebook.

A very cheap thinkpad if he need a laptop.

When I need more power I use RDPs with free cloud credits which you can easily get.

If you can get your hands on a raspberry pi at the real price it could be even cheaper. When I was really broke I was just hooking a PI to my TV, with a 30-40$ wireless keyboard+touchpad(logitech). And I was connecting to a remote RDP with free cloud credits.(the PI itself is actually usable with just a light linux distro, but it's kind of limited)

I was basically getting the equivalent of a 1K/2K$(or even 4K$ computer) for like 100-150$ tops.

(for credits, there is GCP which offers 300$ for the free trial, or AWS which have all kind of different offers, from student programs(including online courses), to any kind of entrepreurship program, if you have a basic website or just a landing page with a realistic project you can get a TON of credits, it doesn't have to be a real startup, just a side project that you may or may not finish one day...)

he could also learn some basics about cloud services/hosting that way...

I learned on a Chromebook with 1gb of ram and Linux installed. This was fine for sublime text and running a rails or react dev server.