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Seeking advice..

I recently started on the Discrete Maths course at Warwick and I enjoy the computer science side of things so much more than I expected to.

I currently own a Samsung laptop, running on windows 8.1 that is very slow (regardless of the fact it has practically nothing on it and is 2 years old) and only runs fast enough to do the basics like research and typing things up.

I want to possibly invest in a new laptop that I can hopefully program on (using bash preferably) but just really want something fast and efficient and preferably lightweight but that's not too important.

Can anyone give me any advice/ personal experience on this?

Also, I am currently programming in java and really enjoying it, are there many languages that are similar so I can start to learn some new stuff without pulling myself away from java too much? I don't think I'm comfortable enough to just start afresh again, but again, any advice is appreciated!

I know this question about laptops gets asked a lot but I am genuinely just looking for something better and more suited to my needs so I don't want to get it wrong.

Thank you for any responses.
I've been looking for a better laptop recently and if you have enough money for a good one then it's definitely worth it!
My boyfriend does a physics and astronomy course and computing is vital to his course too, he has a Sony VAIO computer, although this was quite expensive.
I'd advise you go on PC World/Curry's website (or similar) and try and find a laptop that suits you by using the filters, that's how I found my perfect gaming PC!
I'm not sure which model of laptop is best (I've heard good things about Thinkpads though) but I recommend using a Linux distro instead of Windows. However, if you continue using Windows, C# is a nice language to learn; I prefer it to Java but it is quite similar. If you switch to Linux, C++ is probably the best option. All distros come with GCC installed so you can compile things right off the bat. I use Debian and it suits my purposes fine, plus it is pretty customisable as all of the configuration files are accessible and can be modified.
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tim_123
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Original post by mathematigeek
I recently started on the Discrete Maths course at Warwick and I enjoy the computer science side of things so much more than I expected to.

I currently own a Samsung laptop, running on windows 8.1 that is very slow (regardless of the fact it has practically nothing on it and is 2 years old) and only runs fast enough to do the basics like research and typing things up.

I want to possibly invest in a new laptop that I can hopefully program on (using bash preferably) but just really want something fast and efficient and preferably lightweight but that's not too important.

Can anyone give me any advice/ personal experience on this?

Also, I am currently programming in java and really enjoying it, are there many languages that are similar so I can start to learn some new stuff without pulling myself away from java too much? I don't think I'm comfortable enough to just start afresh again, but again, any advice is appreciated!

I know this question about laptops gets asked a lot but I am genuinely just looking for something better and more suited to my needs so I don't want to get it wrong.

Thank you for any responses.


Don't worry too much about learning loads of different languages, try to get to grips with the fundementals of programming in general, which you can do fine in Java. Once you understand the concepts of programming, you can switch between languages quite easily.

As a side note, if you did want to try something different I would say try and learn C, theres concepts in C that are hidden in other programming languages, and learning those can really help understand what is happening under the hood.

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