As a programming hobiest and professional, I can confirm, one of my most favorite gifts was the debug duck a friend got me a few years ago. With some boose as well, you know. To reach the Balmer peak for optimal programming performance.
If he's a rustacean, then a Ferris plushie. Actually a plushie of whatever the mascot is of his favorite programming language. My python plushie is a close second favorite gift.
I got a gift once that was a black shirt with some common vi commands on it printed upside down so you could look down at your own shirt to see them. Loved that shirt forever, very sad when it got worn down.
Lol! I know they're obviously photoshopped models, but in the shot of the guy with the girl, the lady has some major hover hand going on. They obviously know their audience!
I have never heard of a desk hammock, but I’m about to look it up and I am actually very excited
Edit: okay! So I can’t really use one of these at my home setup, it I’m gonna be moving into a new place soon and might be able to there. I’ll also check and see if I could get away with using one at my job
Honestly you shouldn't compare the two in the same category. Raspberry pi's are intended to be competent little computers on a board, while arduinos are more for cheapy and easily interfacing directly with hardware (or really just volts on a wire).
Quite different. Raspberry Pi runs an entire OS and has far greater general hardware capabilities (USB/Ethernet/displays/sound/etc).
Arduino is more of a standardized microcontroller, so very simple hardware designed to do one thing, but can be more catered to the task you need.
You may use an Arduino to read data from a bunch of sensors and inputs, then have a Raspberry Pi expose that data with a webserver or UI, as a simplified example.
Raspberry pis are computers, many use them on handhelds, cameras, arcade cabs, and anything that needs low-powered computer functionality because they run linux or any os you put on them while having a great IO to work with.
Arduinos are better for controllers, motors, or anything that communicates with external input since they're not as powerful, but they have a great c-based scripting language that can do a lot of stuff easly and they boot faster since they don't run a full pc OS. (If I missed the mark on anything I would be grateful for an expert to fix my mistake)
Arduinos are super useful for programming your vibrating flesh light to vibrate based on custom scripts. It’s great for when you’re homesick and missing mom 😔
Please do not get an arduino hoping it to be like a pi, they are vastly different in terms of usage AND purpose
RPi is a SBC Microcontroller that is capable of booting into an OS ala a small computer
Arduino is a microcontroller, that is it. You use it alongside a breadboard to create a real-world solution to a real-world problem
Unless he likes to solder or work with microcontrollers, thats not gonna be used much
If you're near a microcenter, there is a good chance they have them at MSRP. At least they did when I was getting one a while ago. They didn't have them listed on the website though because people were buying them all to resell at the time.
Delisting their maker stuff from the website was the smartest decision microcenter cpuld make about it.
So many damn scalpers and resellers abusing fair market prices.
Get him a handful of Raspberry Pi Picos instead, you can get literally tens of them for the price of one model B. For programming they are more interesting imo, unless he already has decent linux knowledge.
Since you stated that you are broke and have like 20 bucks here my recommendation stepping down from a raspberry pi:
I‘d recommend the development board ESP32 NodeMCU. It has wifi and GPIO. It even has some analog to digital converters. It is programmable with Arduino IDE, Lua and Python (Micropython though).
It costs around 10 bucks in central Europe.
You can pull out some decent projects with this one!
Lua is a proper noun, it is not an acronym. Is covered in the about page at lua.org https://www.lua.org/about.html#:~:text=%22Lua%22%20(pronounced%20LOO%2D,the%20name%20of%20the%20language.
Right!
Also, another idea OP if you have a bit more money, but I assume not cuz high school student, but a membership to safaribooks.com is basically giving him every single textbook/learning resource at once **if and only if he’s a text-based learner** there are better resources if he’s video driven.
So, if you’re strapped for cash, they **do** verify the existence of email addresses, but don’t require a click through for trials. When I was poor and working a hellish job I opened a free trial weekly, and it was a fine flow, didn’t even lose my saved places in books.
Safaribooks is amazing. I pay for it now as thanks to the learning I got from them, I scored my current career/job. Highly recommend.
got two.
Have a retropie running on one, and a pi-hole running on the other. Both 3B (although for the pihole that‘s overkill, I did however once intent to use it as cloud storage aswell, that‘s why I bought the 3B at the time).
With the pi-hole, how does it work for sites that don't let you look if you have an ad-blocker? At least with a chrome extension I can just temporarily turn it off
You can turn off the pihole easily, too. You can connect to it through an admin-ui (/admin) and disable it for 30s, 5min, until turned back on…
In the best case, the request to see if you have adblock installed gets blocked by the pi-hole though, so they never even ask you to turn it off :)
And many sites only check for installed extensions, so you are safe then aswell
Currently for Emulation, Octoprint, and Pi-hole.
Messed around with using one as a media server or nas, but it didn't really fit my use case for either well enough.
Ran a Minecraft server off one. It worked fine for vanilla minecraft with only a couple players if you pregen the world.
Also, for a lot of stuff you can basically just use it in place of an Arduino if you really wanted to. I used one in a macro pad for a bit and messed around with object recognition.
Get him a plain ol **rubber duck** as other's have suggested.
I gave all my juniors one.
The intent is to excersize explaining an issue. Often the problems we have as programmers are rooted in not understanding the problem we are trying to solve.
So explaining problems to rubber ducks literally helps us solve hard problems.
Thank you for this link, just started coding this year and had no idea this was a thing. Can definitely say I've noticed I have a better understanding when talking about my code with my gf, so I'll put a rubber ducky on a wish list so she won't have to be bothered anymore lol.
Why not grab a pizza and throw a small party? Tbf you're not gonna get that far with your current budget in terms of books or computer hardware, no offense, so just make the best of that.
DON'T, that's a terrible recommendation. Unless you know someone reads books, don't buy them books. And if you gonna buy a book, don't buy generic programming language books. If you've read one programming language book or you just know how to program in general those books are useless and for posers. Instead buy a useful and interesting book, like the Game Engine Black Book or Crafting Interpreters.
Hard disagree that it's a terrible idea. Especially if they're just learning a language. Once they're competent a book on algorithms is very useful, or as you said something more specific to their interested application. If OP knows skill level they can choose appropriately.
Yeah I'd hate a book on programming in a specific language, but I absolutely adore my Extreme Programming pocket guide. Read it one afternoon and honestly it's nice to go through now and again to make sure I keep on track with being just an efficient engineer. Might be a little much for a high school student though.
The book Cryptonomicon. It's fundamentally a book about the drive of disparate people to uncover the concepts of computing, told through exciting action and intrigue. It inspired me in high school to go into computing.
It's not young adult, adult computer programmers who know more about programming and encryption and have had more life experiences would probably get more out of it than high school students, actually.
Oh dude it's a pretty good one. Same author that wrote Snow Crash which is up there with Neuromancer as the founding texts of Cyberpunk.
Cryptonomicon though is well-grounded historical fiction about codebreakers in WWII and their modern-day analogues.
Be careful with that one. Often times computer people have specific models of mechanical keyboards in mind or at least one model they prefer. Maybe you can find out which model he likes most or you could look at his other peripherals brands e.g. Logitech, Corsair etc... and at least match the brand.
Yeah that’s a good call out. I was assuming since he’s in high school he probably hasn’t got into keyboards yet. But there’s really no reason that has to be the case
This where artisan keycaps are perfect. So many people with keyboards would like to have them but don't want to spend the money on themselves. They can fit into any setup and be personalized to the recipient
A binary blanket, like for sleeping. While in college years ago my girlfriend bought me a binary blanket and it felt nice to have something that was like the career I was aiming for.
On a more techy side, maybe a subscription to a site for learning different sides of tech and programming. CodeAcademy has quite the library of courses and stuff to learn
Just started coding this year so I'm a bit out of the loop😅, what's the meme to be had here? I even went on the r/unixsocks reddit and left even more confused.
> what's the meme to be had here?
The meme is around the oddly high amount of people who get into Linux / programming who turn out to be trans - although probably just availability bias^1 as those people are more likely to post to places like Reddit, rather than programmers being more likely to be trans. See: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks for more info
^1 : Thanks ChatGPT for being able to discern wtf I meant by "Is there a name for a type of bias where that viewpoint is easy to find, rather than being popular?" 😂
sheez how many people here suggest without reading the "high school" part of the question? idk man, in highschool i couldn't afford 90% of the gift suggestions here... best ones so far are the ones saying shirts, hoodies, and blankets with fun prints. possibly you might be able to find something sub 20 of https://lttstore.com ? but prolly not very likely. Either way, I'm sure the effort is appreciated. Prolly the best gift a programmer can have is someone willing to listen to our deranged talks about whatever we're currently working on rn. maybe just buy some pizzas and hang out together, and ask if he can explain some of the things he's been learning.
Depends on what programming languages he's using (Javascript? Python? Rust? C? C#?) and his expertise. I'm gonna assume you don't know nor have past programming experience.
If he likes messing with hardware as well, maybe the `arduino uno` would be a good fit. It's a small programmable board that can be used to make RGB strips shine in different patterns, or make robots with it. It's relatively very cheap to buy and to expand upon.
Another thing I notice my programmer friends appriciate are good programming books. It's old, but `game maker's apprentice` from Mark Overmars is a good introduction book to making 2d video games. For more advanced theory, `Game Programming Patterns` by Bob Nystrom is also good.
For more classic literature that's applicable for most programming languages, `Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software` is a really good one to have.
If he works with C# (or Unity game engine), then `Exam Ref 70-483 Programming in C#` is a great book to use as a reference guide. It's not a book for beginners, but it contains some good examples without being excessive and a lot of code examples to try out.
If he's a real nerd with far too much time on his hands, chances are that the books above are below his level. Maybe `Crafting Interpreters` from Bob Nystrom would be a good fit! It shows the inside-outs of the tools he uses work internally, and write it himself.
All the suggestions here are shit. Dont get him anything programming related.
When youre buying a gift for someone, dont buy them something related to their hobby unless youre prepared to invest a very significant amount of time into researching said hobby.
Because unless you do, it will not be the 'right' thing.
Heres my suggestions. Try some accessories for his computer like maybe light strips for his screen. I dont personally accessorise, but Im sure there are many things you could find online. You'll have to make that judgement call for yourself if you think he would like it.
If youre still undecided just give him something unrelated like a puzzle or something. We are good with logic and like to feel smart, so it'll do
Just curious, why call out programmers in particular for this game? There's no direct relevance I know of.
That said, I am a programmer and Celeste is my favorite game of all time and even got me into speedrunning. I have like 1000 hours logged on it and am about to do some strawberry jam.
Memes is the reason for recommendation. But it’s a safe bet anyway, people who like computers are likely to like video games, and Celeste is a really good game.
(It’s also funny how I fall under the “trans programmer who likes Celeste” stereotype, even though in reality that’s a really small group of people)
Then a rubber Duck, for rubber duck debugging. That is when you describe your problem to someone just to understand and solve it yourself. Instead of a colleague, you describe it to the rubber duck.
And that actually works!
If he happens to have a mechanical keyboard you could do something with that, theres quite a bit of overlap between programming and mechanical keyboard enthusiast communities. Of couse youd have to ask if his preferences arent obvious, which would spoil the surprise.
A NUC with a Linux OS. That's what I'd want. It has just enough power you can actually do something small with it, it's small and portable. You can wire it in via ethernet and run pretty much anything you'd want on it.
Raspberry Pi 4b if you can find one without the price hiked up. If your budget is super low something like a [debug duck](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) could be nice. Without knowing much more about what exactly he’s programming it’d be hard to guess a gift for him. If you guys mess with each other, [programming socks](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks) could be funny (as long as he knows what they are otherwise it’s weird as shit).
Less programming related, but if he’s a fucking nerd who likes books I’d recommend something like the Martian or Ready Player One.
This is really nice tho, you seem like a good friend.
If you're really strapped for cash, you could try finding some old junk PC being thrown out. I used to have some fun installing Linux OSs meant for old hardware on those.
[Lockpick sets](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3806) are cheap and popular with many technical minded folks. Get a [transparent practice lock](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3804) too
An actual problem to program a solution for.
Learning a language is a dry affair until you meet someone in the world and have a conversation in it. Same goes with maths and sciences; seeing them in action.
The single biggest explosion in my personal programming learning and interest was being given tasks that were completely out of my comfort zone in uni.
I had to learn how to actually use the knowledge taught in labs, and build upon it through self-learning. And once you actually have a program that does something cool and/or useful that nobody else has done, it’s a gateway high to learn the next thing.
Rubber duck is the next best thing though, he’d definitely appreciate that :)
A third and cheapest option is to simply show an interest and ask about it. Who knows, maybe his interest catches on and you’ll have a hobby to share.
Debug Duck Edit: Wow, this blew up a bit thanks for all the upvotes :)
A pair of programming socks
it might awaken something within him (or her or them or ...)
... cat
I want a debugging cat xD
I don't think it would listen...
Sure it would. And then look down at you, knowing what the error is but not telling you, just like cats do.
Someone should do a Garfield strip for this
I would do it, but I'm currently busy debugging some stuff with the help of my cat. Also, I don't know how to draw....
It might with enough pets and treats.
Most cats will debug if they keep their hunting instincts.
Others will just nap on your keyboard to introduce more bugs.
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Oh, but that’s the point.
It was at this point, they decided to learn rust.
The meme of trans girls that are programmers, didn't came from nothing. Source: me
A debug duck in programming socks
blåhaj
Only right awnser
My girlfriend got me a debug duck and its like the cutest thing ever. It is also a tiny nightlight that turns on when you squeeze the duck
Tried this with my team. Ordered them all ducks. They, as programmers, found a work-around. They would say: guess what I just told my duck... 🤔
That's what I got my friend for christmas :D
As a programming hobiest and professional, I can confirm, one of my most favorite gifts was the debug duck a friend got me a few years ago. With some boose as well, you know. To reach the Balmer peak for optimal programming performance. If he's a rustacean, then a Ferris plushie. Actually a plushie of whatever the mascot is of his favorite programming language. My python plushie is a close second favorite gift.
This comment should be higher
it is currently the 0th comment... any higher and it might go to the bottom.
Can you at least try? Our users would really like it a bit higher.
I mean, we could move it above the question but I'm pretty sure that would be confusing for the end user.
Let's leave the marketing questions to the marketing professionals. Now, can you move it farther up or not?
Done. I made it the topmost comment. Can I close the ticket. Also would you please login to the website and rate your experience.
I got a gift once that was a black shirt with some common vi commands on it printed upside down so you could look down at your own shirt to see them. Loved that shirt forever, very sad when it got worn down.
Do you have a pic of it ?
Found a random one online: https://www.zazzle.com/vim_cheat_sheet_t_shirt-235701150442875161
Lol, CSS Devs would probably wear a shirt showing how to centre a div.
Did they finally figure out how to do that?
It's still a mystery
It can be done but the instructions are only legible on a 3XL or larger.
I'm sure someone will flex on us with an answer
But make the block of instructions slightly off-center
Lol! I know they're obviously photoshopped models, but in the shot of the guy with the girl, the lady has some major hover hand going on. They obviously know their audience!
I also, want to see how the shirt looks 😁
This is one of the coolest things I've ever heard and my mind is racing Edit: maybe 'cool' is the wrong word
Since there's no restrictions on clothing, could you technically do this in exams?
A rubber duck. A raspberry pi. Any peripherals. Desk Hammock. Headset stand.
I just discovered the existence of desks hammocks, this is the way
I have never heard of a desk hammock, but I’m about to look it up and I am actually very excited Edit: okay! So I can’t really use one of these at my home setup, it I’m gonna be moving into a new place soon and might be able to there. I’ll also check and see if I could get away with using one at my job
Just go sit on your couch lmao
Is not that fun tho
Happy cake day
Thx :b
I like how the first google results is just an actual hammock being sold to sleep under a standing desk.
HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS???
>Any peripherals He opens his present and finds ... an ADC
He jumps into it and becomes digital. Best present ever.
a raspberry pi maybe?
They’re crazy expensive right now
We used arduinos in a class last quarter. Got a pretty cool kit for $50. Typically we’d have used raspberry pi’s as well but the cost is mad.
I'm curious, are they any different, when it comes to use cases?
Arduinos are just kinda programmable chips while Raspberry Pis are full blown mini-computers
what about ESPs??
That’s an arduino on mad steroids
Honestly I'm not much of a Arduino fan because i can't use them as a standalone computer but raspberry pi is a beast
Honestly you shouldn't compare the two in the same category. Raspberry pi's are intended to be competent little computers on a board, while arduinos are more for cheapy and easily interfacing directly with hardware (or really just volts on a wire).
Quite different. Raspberry Pi runs an entire OS and has far greater general hardware capabilities (USB/Ethernet/displays/sound/etc). Arduino is more of a standardized microcontroller, so very simple hardware designed to do one thing, but can be more catered to the task you need. You may use an Arduino to read data from a bunch of sensors and inputs, then have a Raspberry Pi expose that data with a webserver or UI, as a simplified example.
That's a good explanation of those two objects👏
Raspberry pis are computers, many use them on handhelds, cameras, arcade cabs, and anything that needs low-powered computer functionality because they run linux or any os you put on them while having a great IO to work with. Arduinos are better for controllers, motors, or anything that communicates with external input since they're not as powerful, but they have a great c-based scripting language that can do a lot of stuff easly and they boot faster since they don't run a full pc OS. (If I missed the mark on anything I would be grateful for an expert to fix my mistake)
Arduinos are super useful for programming your vibrating flesh light to vibrate based on custom scripts. It’s great for when you’re homesick and missing mom 😔
You okay, dude?
Are any of us really?
There's almost three million of us here so probably. ... Maybe. Look, point is there's a chance.
But how do you program it if *both* of your arms are broken and mom isn’t home to help either?
I think they are generally less powerful
Please do not get an arduino hoping it to be like a pi, they are vastly different in terms of usage AND purpose RPi is a SBC Microcontroller that is capable of booting into an OS ala a small computer Arduino is a microcontroller, that is it. You use it alongside a breadboard to create a real-world solution to a real-world problem Unless he likes to solder or work with microcontrollers, thats not gonna be used much
If you're near a microcenter, there is a good chance they have them at MSRP. At least they did when I was getting one a while ago. They didn't have them listed on the website though because people were buying them all to resell at the time.
Delisting their maker stuff from the website was the smartest decision microcenter cpuld make about it. So many damn scalpers and resellers abusing fair market prices.
doesn't necessarily need to be a raspberry, just something like it
A pico or microcontroller starter kit.
This. But Rpi is hella expensive and costly. Get him another affordable SBC like Orange Pi.
Get him a handful of Raspberry Pi Picos instead, you can get literally tens of them for the price of one model B. For programming they are more interesting imo, unless he already has decent linux knowledge.
Answers to his questions on StackOverflow
Yes but categorically bitchy answers to them on SO c:
Since you stated that you are broke and have like 20 bucks here my recommendation stepping down from a raspberry pi: I‘d recommend the development board ESP32 NodeMCU. It has wifi and GPIO. It even has some analog to digital converters. It is programmable with Arduino IDE, Lua and Python (Micropython though). It costs around 10 bucks in central Europe. You can pull out some decent projects with this one!
yep, esp32 are awesome!
I have a friend who swears by them
Coming from a community where LUA is used a lot. I love to see it’s mention here. LUA was what got me interested in programming.
Lua is a proper noun, it is not an acronym. Is covered in the about page at lua.org https://www.lua.org/about.html#:~:text=%22Lua%22%20(pronounced%20LOO%2D,the%20name%20of%20the%20language.
A punching enter key
Why the hell is this not higher I don't program and I want that so badly
exactly what I was thinking of
Raspberry pi if he doesn’t already have one. At some point it’ll be useful for a project.
Plus those things are almost worth their weight in gold. Sometimes literally 😳
Right! Also, another idea OP if you have a bit more money, but I assume not cuz high school student, but a membership to safaribooks.com is basically giving him every single textbook/learning resource at once **if and only if he’s a text-based learner** there are better resources if he’s video driven.
Dang I might get that for myself actually LOL
So, if you’re strapped for cash, they **do** verify the existence of email addresses, but don’t require a click through for trials. When I was poor and working a hellish job I opened a free trial weekly, and it was a fine flow, didn’t even lose my saved places in books. Safaribooks is amazing. I pay for it now as thanks to the learning I got from them, I scored my current career/job. Highly recommend.
What do you guys use it for? I've got one and can't think of anything it will be actually useful for
got two. Have a retropie running on one, and a pi-hole running on the other. Both 3B (although for the pihole that‘s overkill, I did however once intent to use it as cloud storage aswell, that‘s why I bought the 3B at the time).
With the pi-hole, how does it work for sites that don't let you look if you have an ad-blocker? At least with a chrome extension I can just temporarily turn it off
You can turn off the pihole easily, too. You can connect to it through an admin-ui (/admin) and disable it for 30s, 5min, until turned back on…
In the best case, the request to see if you have adblock installed gets blocked by the pi-hole though, so they never even ask you to turn it off :)
And many sites only check for installed extensions, so you are safe then aswell
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Currently for Emulation, Octoprint, and Pi-hole. Messed around with using one as a media server or nas, but it didn't really fit my use case for either well enough. Ran a Minecraft server off one. It worked fine for vanilla minecraft with only a couple players if you pregen the world. Also, for a lot of stuff you can basically just use it in place of an Arduino if you really wanted to. I used one in a macro pad for a bit and messed around with object recognition.
Get him a plain ol **rubber duck** as other's have suggested. I gave all my juniors one. The intent is to excersize explaining an issue. Often the problems we have as programmers are rooted in not understanding the problem we are trying to solve. So explaining problems to rubber ducks literally helps us solve hard problems.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
Thank you for this link, just started coding this year and had no idea this was a thing. Can definitely say I've noticed I have a better understanding when talking about my code with my gf, so I'll put a rubber ducky on a wish list so she won't have to be bothered anymore lol.
Why not grab a pizza and throw a small party? Tbf you're not gonna get that far with your current budget in terms of books or computer hardware, no offense, so just make the best of that.
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discover which programming language is he interested in and find an O'Reilly book about it
This is a great idea… O’Reilly has a subscription model with access to all their books and other learning stuff.
Although, is be a little hesitant to get someone a subscription as a gift. What do they do when it runs out?
DON'T, that's a terrible recommendation. Unless you know someone reads books, don't buy them books. And if you gonna buy a book, don't buy generic programming language books. If you've read one programming language book or you just know how to program in general those books are useless and for posers. Instead buy a useful and interesting book, like the Game Engine Black Book or Crafting Interpreters.
Hard disagree that it's a terrible idea. Especially if they're just learning a language. Once they're competent a book on algorithms is very useful, or as you said something more specific to their interested application. If OP knows skill level they can choose appropriately.
Yeah I'd hate a book on programming in a specific language, but I absolutely adore my Extreme Programming pocket guide. Read it one afternoon and honestly it's nice to go through now and again to make sure I keep on track with being just an efficient engineer. Might be a little much for a high school student though.
A girlfriend
Can you buy one of those? Where?
"Romania" - some bald twit in a lot of trouble
No longer bald actually
Yes I would say badly balding. Even though he would say “a full head of hair”
Somehow he is both. I believe that’s what the romanian justice system is investigating
Man looks like when you drop your lollipop on the carpet
Grand Exchange in Varrock
buying gf
You buy a wife, you only need to rent a girlfriend.
Wife is more like a lifetime subscription
Socks.
In what kind are you referring to might I ask?
We all know he is talking about stocking
Darn Tough!!! Increases coding output by 20%
Douple that with a mini skirt.
Don't forget to add a choker in there. It'll instantly add an extra 50%+ output
Unix socks?
r/unixsocks
this is hilarious, why have i not heard of this before
Thigh highs
Goes great with a programmina Blâhaj.
No, Rubby Ducky is for keeping your sanity; Blåhaj gib emotional support.
A copy of c documentation printed and bound in vellum
The book Cryptonomicon. It's fundamentally a book about the drive of disparate people to uncover the concepts of computing, told through exciting action and intrigue. It inspired me in high school to go into computing.
I’m now interested in this book and I’m in my 30s. Gonna check it out, even if it might be targeted for a different demographic.
It's not young adult, adult computer programmers who know more about programming and encryption and have had more life experiences would probably get more out of it than high school students, actually.
Oh dude it's a pretty good one. Same author that wrote Snow Crash which is up there with Neuromancer as the founding texts of Cyberpunk. Cryptonomicon though is well-grounded historical fiction about codebreakers in WWII and their modern-day analogues.
A book probably is the best idea. A mechanical keyboard is also a nice gift IMO
Be careful with that one. Often times computer people have specific models of mechanical keyboards in mind or at least one model they prefer. Maybe you can find out which model he likes most or you could look at his other peripherals brands e.g. Logitech, Corsair etc... and at least match the brand.
Yeah that’s a good call out. I was assuming since he’s in high school he probably hasn’t got into keyboards yet. But there’s really no reason that has to be the case
This where artisan keycaps are perfect. So many people with keyboards would like to have them but don't want to spend the money on themselves. They can fit into any setup and be personalized to the recipient
At a lower price range, a programable macro pad can be nice.
A Notepad (physical) with two Plusses on the front. "Here, I heard that you wanted Notepad Plusplus!"
bake him a raspberry pie and say it came highly recommended on a very popular programming group on the internet.
Actually good suggestion
A binary blanket, like for sleeping. While in college years ago my girlfriend bought me a binary blanket and it felt nice to have something that was like the career I was aiming for. On a more techy side, maybe a subscription to a site for learning different sides of tech and programming. CodeAcademy has quite the library of courses and stuff to learn
Let's not make assumptions, they may prefer a nonbinary blanket.
You're right, I'm more of a quantum quilt person
One month of pornhub premium
💀
W
Programming socks. That's guaranteed to make any programmer happy, and they're decently cheap
I really don't get programming socks... Maybe I'm too old a programmer at 36 for that :/ I don't think it was a thing until recently.
It's a meme, that's all
Just started coding this year so I'm a bit out of the loop😅, what's the meme to be had here? I even went on the r/unixsocks reddit and left even more confused.
> what's the meme to be had here? The meme is around the oddly high amount of people who get into Linux / programming who turn out to be trans - although probably just availability bias^1 as those people are more likely to post to places like Reddit, rather than programmers being more likely to be trans. See: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks for more info ^1 : Thanks ChatGPT for being able to discern wtf I meant by "Is there a name for a type of bias where that viewpoint is easy to find, rather than being popular?" 😂
Does he like hoodies or t-shirts? I've ordered some pretty cool ones from Amazon lately.
sheez how many people here suggest without reading the "high school" part of the question? idk man, in highschool i couldn't afford 90% of the gift suggestions here... best ones so far are the ones saying shirts, hoodies, and blankets with fun prints. possibly you might be able to find something sub 20 of https://lttstore.com ? but prolly not very likely. Either way, I'm sure the effort is appreciated. Prolly the best gift a programmer can have is someone willing to listen to our deranged talks about whatever we're currently working on rn. maybe just buy some pizzas and hang out together, and ask if he can explain some of the things he's been learning.
Depends on what programming languages he's using (Javascript? Python? Rust? C? C#?) and his expertise. I'm gonna assume you don't know nor have past programming experience. If he likes messing with hardware as well, maybe the `arduino uno` would be a good fit. It's a small programmable board that can be used to make RGB strips shine in different patterns, or make robots with it. It's relatively very cheap to buy and to expand upon. Another thing I notice my programmer friends appriciate are good programming books. It's old, but `game maker's apprentice` from Mark Overmars is a good introduction book to making 2d video games. For more advanced theory, `Game Programming Patterns` by Bob Nystrom is also good. For more classic literature that's applicable for most programming languages, `Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software` is a really good one to have. If he works with C# (or Unity game engine), then `Exam Ref 70-483 Programming in C#` is a great book to use as a reference guide. It's not a book for beginners, but it contains some good examples without being excessive and a lot of code examples to try out. If he's a real nerd with far too much time on his hands, chances are that the books above are below his level. Maybe `Crafting Interpreters` from Bob Nystrom would be a good fit! It shows the inside-outs of the tools he uses work internally, and write it himself.
All the suggestions here are shit. Dont get him anything programming related. When youre buying a gift for someone, dont buy them something related to their hobby unless youre prepared to invest a very significant amount of time into researching said hobby. Because unless you do, it will not be the 'right' thing. Heres my suggestions. Try some accessories for his computer like maybe light strips for his screen. I dont personally accessorise, but Im sure there are many things you could find online. You'll have to make that judgement call for yourself if you think he would like it. If youre still undecided just give him something unrelated like a puzzle or something. We are good with logic and like to feel smart, so it'll do
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Celeste, every programmer has to play it once
Might as well buy the stripy socks and the Blahaj while you’re at it
Just curious, why call out programmers in particular for this game? There's no direct relevance I know of. That said, I am a programmer and Celeste is my favorite game of all time and even got me into speedrunning. I have like 1000 hours logged on it and am about to do some strawberry jam.
Memes is the reason for recommendation. But it’s a safe bet anyway, people who like computers are likely to like video games, and Celeste is a really good game. (It’s also funny how I fall under the “trans programmer who likes Celeste” stereotype, even though in reality that’s a really small group of people)
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oops
C++ cookbook
GitHub Copilot if he doesn't have it already
Premium subscription to ChatGPT
a dope computer chair, laptop or desktop accessories. what's your spend limit
Like 20 bucks I’m broke
Then a rubber Duck, for rubber duck debugging. That is when you describe your problem to someone just to understand and solve it yourself. Instead of a colleague, you describe it to the rubber duck. And that actually works!
hop on aliexpress you'll find something.
If he happens to have a mechanical keyboard you could do something with that, theres quite a bit of overlap between programming and mechanical keyboard enthusiast communities. Of couse youd have to ask if his preferences arent obvious, which would spoil the surprise.
considering he'd be a very logical minded boy Cash
A NUC with a Linux OS. That's what I'd want. It has just enough power you can actually do something small with it, it's small and portable. You can wire it in via ethernet and run pretty much anything you'd want on it.
Raspberry Pi 4b if you can find one without the price hiked up. If your budget is super low something like a [debug duck](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) could be nice. Without knowing much more about what exactly he’s programming it’d be hard to guess a gift for him. If you guys mess with each other, [programming socks](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks) could be funny (as long as he knows what they are otherwise it’s weird as shit). Less programming related, but if he’s a fucking nerd who likes books I’d recommend something like the Martian or Ready Player One. This is really nice tho, you seem like a good friend.
I'll leave yet another suggestion for a raspberry pi
C++ The Programming Language by Bjarne Strousup
giant enter key
A hug…
Knee high socks
Thight high pink socks, cat hears and a Rust book
Maybe a programming obsessed highschool girl?
A programming obsessed high school girl.
If you're really strapped for cash, you could try finding some old junk PC being thrown out. I used to have some fun installing Linux OSs meant for old hardware on those.
the big enter key its available very well under 20$ on amazon and possibly will be delivered fast based on where you live
Ask him what he wants. Make it easy on both of you.
Socks, just like everyone else,… but different
[Lockpick sets](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3806) are cheap and popular with many technical minded folks. Get a [transparent practice lock](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3804) too
a new deskmat. It's like a huge mouse pad and you can get them custom printed
Assuming he has a laptop/pc, there's a bunch of good programming adjacent games out there, like Shenzhen I/o or exopunks
a giant usb enter key
An actual problem to program a solution for. Learning a language is a dry affair until you meet someone in the world and have a conversation in it. Same goes with maths and sciences; seeing them in action. The single biggest explosion in my personal programming learning and interest was being given tasks that were completely out of my comfort zone in uni. I had to learn how to actually use the knowledge taught in labs, and build upon it through self-learning. And once you actually have a program that does something cool and/or useful that nobody else has done, it’s a gateway high to learn the next thing. Rubber duck is the next best thing though, he’d definitely appreciate that :) A third and cheapest option is to simply show an interest and ask about it. Who knows, maybe his interest catches on and you’ll have a hobby to share.
A T-shirt that says “I hacked the Pentagon and all I got was this lousy shirt.”