Laptop for Programming

AAB · June 29, 2019

Hi,

I want a laptop to do programming. It will involve competitive coding(C++), Javascript, Spring Boot, Python Django Web Apps. When I was in college I used Hadoop MapReduce, did a few ML(sklearn) related assignments.

A little about my old laptop.

The old HP Laptop(2015) with 8gigs of Ram and Core i7(4510U) 1TB of HDD was decent I ran Ubuntu on it, Windows for Games, it had plenty of Driver issues(Ubuntu) the battery backup was not great, screen not great. It had a 3-year Warranty so when the HDD, speaker went poof I was least worried. It did its job. It was costing me Rs.55000 +4500 for a new battery after 3 years.

The reason I am saying this story is after paying Rs.60,000 I didn't spend anything more and the Lappy did all the tasks I threw at it for almost 5 years.

After using Macbooks at work I felt somehow that my HP laptop had slower wifi(Windows and Ubuntu) in spite of the bigger size the speakers were not that loud and well the screen was shitty even compared to other laptops so not going to compare it with a Mac. Apart from my keyboard having more key travel, the Mac did well in almost all places not to mention editing a personal video was just so extremely easy on iMovie.

So as you can see from the rant I want to buy a MacBook but I am confused about which one to buy. The MacBook Air costs around Rs.1 lakh has a weak processor so the MacBook Pro is my option but the problem is the entry-level MacBook Pro costs Rs. 1.2 lakh and I can't expand Ram to 16gigs. The i5 seems fine for my use case but I am really concerned about the 8GB ram.

Apart from that, my concerns are repairs. I have read many articles talking about the MacBook keyboard needing replacement. Is now a good time to buy a Mac or should I wait a few months and we will have a 16gig Macbook Pro " Rs 1.2Lakh?

I plan to use it for 5 years at least so please give valuable feedback. People, who develop on mac how is the keyboard holding up?

Are repairs something very frequent or is it you have shit luck you have to pay a lot thingy?

Any Laptop that has good driver(by default) support with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro with decent battery life + great display if so please suggest them too...