Hey there programmers, developers and coders of the Giant Bomb community, I'm student about to start a Computer Science degree and I'm curious as to what similar students and actual professional code wizards use.

So below, if you'd be so kind, can you post your PC specs, laptop specs and whether you rock one or both.

Work: Macbook Pro

Home: PC WinXP, maybe Pentium 4. The sticker says Pentium at least.

You don't need a beefy PC to program, it's a pretty common misconception. Especially as the University you are going to should already have a PC lab for Computing students with great PCs in too. The kind of stuff you will be writing will compile in fractions of a second, so you will be unlikely to need good hardware to avoid lengthy compile times.

That said, my home PC has an i7 950 and a GTX 580 because I play games. However, I have taken part in GameJams and Hackathons using a 7+ year old laptop on Vista which has BSODs regularly and still finished entries in both!

Yeah, you can use anything lying around for programming, if it has Windows XP or higher it will work. The only thing you need beef for is if you are making full 3D games.

Yeah, like the rest said, you don't need anything special to do programming. Making your harddrive an SSD makes any computer more pleasant to use though.

i7-4930K, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD

It's awesome, and yeah, I guess it's overkill for what I need, but every minute saved compiling etc. is time I can spend writing code, so my company'll gladly shell out the extra cash. I'm not slacking off, my code i compiling is pretty much taken out of the equation with my current setup.

I'm one of those who doesn't care and uses whatever's available at work or school too. I always keep a pen and some paper handy though. You never know when you need to quickly take notes, pass notes to others, or draw some diagrams.

So true. If I'm trying to figure out some workflow or logic, writing it on paper seems more effective even though it's just as easy to use Notepad or Visio. I think it's because I get to take my eyes off the computer screen for a bit so my brain doesn't have to be distracted with all the icons and shit and can focus a bit better.

I'm just a hobbyist programmer but I do most of my development via SSH/SFTP to a 1.6GHz Atom machine with 2GB of RAM that runs Lubuntu and doubles as my HTPC.

I'm working as a UE4 developer at the moment, just using my laptop, a Samsung with 8gb ram, 1tb hd, i7 3630qm and a gt 650m card. I'm planning on building a proper desktop once my company gets a few more contracts.

What are you programming? PC apps? Mobile apps? 2d games? 3d games? Web? You can do it all in a netbook if you have the patience.

I ain't no code wizard, but I use a shitty Intel HD Graphics 4600. It'd be a problem if I made anything with good graphics or whatever, but I use 2 monitors and work problem-free with it. I'll upgrade when I can't play modern games at min. spec. anymore.

I have a Mac with 4 GB RAM for developing Objective-C. I had a Mac with 2 GB RAM and the compile time was pretty bad.

I also do .NET development and my work machine is a Windows 7 build with an i5 CPU and 6 GB RAM. Visual Studio runs fine and that program is a beast.

I use a crappy laptop from Dell that doesn't work without the charger being plugged in. I connect it to a monitor and use a client to remote desktop to the actually computer I use to program, which is a server based machine.

But you can program on anything, particularly when you're just starting off.

Work computer is a Xeon E5-1650 3.2 ghz, 32 gb of ram, and a GTX770

If you want a laptop for working, definitely recommend a macbook pro, which is what I use. Not because it's so much more amazing than anything else, but because it's by far one of the most common laptops out there. When you run into problems, you should easily be able to find a solution to fix it and get back to work without spending too much time figuring it out. After spending all day debugging your own stuff, the last thing you'll want to do is figure out why your computer won't use that latest version of python or whatever weird little thing comes up. Lots of guides are out there to get anything you'd want to run working on it in case you prefer ubuntu/windows/etc.

I've got a Lenovo U310 Ultrabook that I really don't like because of the crappy touchpad and keyboard. Dual core 1.7ghz core i5, 4 GB of RAM, integrated graphics, etc. I dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu.

The things to prioritize are keyboard, battery life, and RAM. I'd recommend a Macbook Pro or a Lenovo Thinkpad. They're very sturdy and have fantastic keyboards. Don't do your school work on a desktop, you'll want the portability if you're getting help from a professor/tutor, working with a group, etc.

@skrunch: MacBook Pro. If your university is anything like the one I teach at, many of your professors will be using Macs.

PS I am a professor of computer science. Let me know if you have any other questions!

I'm using an asus zenbook I bought 2 years ago. More importantly I'm using Archlinux. It's a great lightweight linux os, but I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't used linux before; it's a pain in the ass to set up.