Lenovo X230

if only we had some sort of dedicated thread for these things

>>59542509
We have two, in fact.

>>59542490

i have an L460 and ubuntu on it. 8 gigs ram. you probably wont need 16gb and an i7 unless the java IDE's take up like 5-6 GB of ram. but I use my machine more for "managing servers", not development, so your mileage might vary.

laptop doesn't really matter though. try to learn shell scripting asap - really useful.

>>59542490
the tiny screen is gonna be a bitch. I got a T430 (i5, 8GB, SSD) and it sucks when I use it on the go, as opposed to what I normally do which is hook it up to an external monitor.

>>59542490
I've been using an X220 for the past year while I get my masters in software engineering. It's perfect.

An X230 with an SSD and 8gb of ram is more than what you'd need for running Ubuntu and doing some dev work. 16gb if you plan on having a couple VMs running at once.

I do recommend getting an external monitor for your desk. The 12" screen is fine for working in the library, but DAMN does it suck to only see like 50 lines of code at a time.

>>59542490
I have an X220 running Arch/Windows 10 basically doing the exact same thing you described. The series is pretty great as far as that's concerned.

I definitely would put in an SSD or buy a used one with one already in it. As for all the other upgrades you mentioned, I don't really see why it's necessary for a development laptop. Your just wasting money at that point if your not doing any resource intensive tasks. Only problem I've run into is running Visual Studio occasionally because it's stupidly resource greedy, and I've never owned a computer that VS ran 100% smoothly on because it's not effecient software.

Oh yeah, it's fine to start coding in Java, but I recommend switching to C# (.NET) ASAP. It's pretty much a improved version of Java with more features. Only reason not to use it is because MSDN sucks compared to the Java API, and C# isn't as portable as Java is.