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Ask HN: Best laptop and programs for learning to code on the go?

10 points by rblion ↗ HN
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?

11 comments

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jenkstom
If 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.
fengor
I 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.

zdzich
Ubuntu, Sublime text, Terminator
cosmc
Your 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.
mindmade
I'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).
chrisBob
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.
partisan
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.
chatman
Thinkpad. Fedora (DVD version which includes preinstalled git, svn, eclipse, python, jdk etc).
stevenspasbo
I have a macbook pro, and depending on what I'm working on I either use eclipse, ADT, or vim.

The laptop doesn't really matter, but I hate doing any sort of development in windows, so I'd either buy a macbook (second choice) or get a Dell or something and install ubuntu or arch on it.

mostlybadfly
I'm in the same boat, currently teaching myself ruby/rails during lunch breaks from my job in the hopes of finding a better one.

What I use personally is a Chromebook. Yes, it is Chrome OS, but I've been doing all of my tutorials and basic apps this way and I really enjoy it.

You will need to look into Crouton which establishes a chroot of a Linux environment: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton. Once you have this all set up, you can just run the Linux environment as a shell prompt. This allows you to use a text editor such as Caret (great free sublime clone that works as an extension), and test your app locally on ChromeOS.

This post was very helpful in getting started up: https://medium.com/on-coding/setup-a-complete-local-developm...

For example, within the chrome tab that includes my Linux terminal, I can run 'rails new sampleapp', then 'rails s' and open up localhost:3000 where my local rails app displays. I can modify the project directory in caret and push to git using again the Linux terminal. Sorry if I rambled on, I just really enjoy that setup on a $200 laptop.