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Discussion on: Welcome Thread - v36

 
auramix profile image
Scott Josephson

If you just want a machine that will help you learn coding basics, all you really need is a good internet connection, assuming you're doing your study on the web. If you were working solely from books, you could reasonably get away with any old machine that didn't have trouble starting up.

What are some of your learning goals?
What languages/technologies are you interested in?

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erocsrednu profile image
Kaylee

Well just reading is where i am realizing im not learning i learn how to do a few things then move on and months later i forget everything. I want to start working in projects (random ones from the internet) to get real practice but I honestly want a smooth experience I work full time and dont really want to deal with a slow or problematic computer as I work on projects to try to learn how to program. I understand how specs work but what ive realized is even with good specs depending on that computer it may still run slow or have issues.

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auramix profile image
Scott Josephson

Again, it depends on what kinds of technologies and workloads you plan to work with, but all speed issues will likely come down to processor speed and memory. You can even offload some of your computer strain by working with an IDE on a virtual machine, like cloud9. So even without a lot of $ to spend you could get a decent used computer and figure out an efficient way to run it.

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erocsrednu profile image
Kaylee

Well i am hoping to get more of a suggestion based on experience. For example my HP laptop injudt bought had the disk and cpu at 100% usage straight out the box where a Dell i had with similar specs just knew how to manage its use of the cpu and disk and its hard to know how a software manages its specs some overlay of certain brands just use unnecessarily and run the computer down.

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auramix profile image
Scott Josephson

Hmm. You might want to diagnose what resources are using up 100% of cpu and disk. Apple computers have a program called Activity Monitor that allows you to see what resources are being used by your computer at any given time. Presumably there's a way to check out what's eating up all your cpu.

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erocsrednu profile image
Kaylee

not the first time ive had similar issues with an HP ive decided to use that for work which consists of mostly light browsing. Its fine though I will probably just purchase a gaming pc with good reviews to be on the safe side if I cant really find a middle ground.

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tanmayjaiswal profile image
Tanmay-Jaiswal

Firstly, it is unlikely that this is a HP specific issue. Fire up your task manager if you are on Windows, or use the "top" command on Linux. It may make sense to debug your CPU usage first.
I would recommend the Razer Stealth laptop with a good keyboard, amazing specs and decent looks. In general though, buy something with an SSD if you want to minimize launch time for applications.

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erocsrednu profile image
Kaylee

the problem is that the cpu is 100% yet the processes thst are causing that arent there it shows many but none that add up to 100% so its like its hidden. and thank you for that suggestion:D i will look into that one