Valentine’s Day Gift Guide for Developers
Valentine’s Day ️💘 is just around the corner! If you’re head over heels for someone or have that one special developer in your life but you’re not sure what to buy him or her, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the gifts for developers.
Show your affection for the devs you know with these:
For just about anyone
Send a sweet message to show how much you care! You can always send a DIY card but there are also plenty of websites for sending pre-made e-cards. If you want to customize your e-cards, you can try Postable, Punchbowl, or Tinyprints.
If you’re not sure which card to choose, you can’t go wrong with this one:
For something simple, without going overboard
Don’t want to spend more than $20–30 but still want to buy something that your significant other will actually put to good use? Give the gift of laughter and love with t-shirts like these:
Or mugs like this brilliant reminder…
The one for caffeine lovers…
And the cult favorite that’s perfect for front-end developers.
You can also customize t-shirts and mugs with your own taglines like “Keep Calm and Code On”, “Eat Sleep Code”, “World’s #0 Programmer”, and more.
For developers who do some design work and UI/UX developers, there’s also this handy notebook that opens completely flat.
For developers eager to try new things
From a small poll we did towards the end of last year with our mentors, we found that subscriptions to various online learning resources were a popular gift that they wanted. Give the gift of knowledge with one of these:
- Subscription to Egghead.io ($199.99/year)
- Subscription to Treehouse ($25/month) mostly for beginners
- Subscription to CodeSchool (from $16/month) mostly for beginners
- Subscription to Safari Books Online ($399/year) includes O’Reilly books
- Subscription to Lynda (from $19.99/month)
- Subscription to Pluralsight ($299/year)
For something Codementor related, there are Live Classes & Courses.
On that note, some other subscriptions include unlimited private repositories on GitHub ($7/month) and DigitalOcean Hosting (from $5/month).
And don’t forget the gaming-related subscriptions like World of Warcraft (from $12.99/month), popular games like Overwatch ($59.99), or card packs for Hearthstone (from $2.99) .
And now, the best for last…
For that really special someone
Whether it’s your wife or husband, best friend, relative, or even your favorite colleague, if you’re ready to splurge on a gift then here are some things at the very top of many developers’ wish list:
Drone
Make sure they read a safety guide like this one beforehand — don’t want any accidents!
Laptop (e.g. Macbook Pro 15”, Microsoft Surface Book, etc.)
May be good to check if they prefer iOS or Windows first. For iOS users, the new Macbook Pro with Touch Bar may be neat for those who want to write Emojicode. Below is an example from their homepage:
🏁 🍇
👴 Let’s print the first 15 fibonaccis. 🍮 a 0
🍮 b 1 🔂 i ⏩ 0 15 🍇
🍦 r ➕ a b
🍮 a b
🍮 b r
😀 🔡 r 10
🍉
🍉
Phone (e.g. iPhone 7, Samsung Galaxy S7, Google Pixel, etc.)
Like the previous one, double check whether or not the gift recipient is an iOS user. Here’s a comparison guide of the 3 most popular ones last year.
Computer monitor
If you’re thinking, “But he/she already has a computer monitor”, then meet Derrick Williams. He has 6 monitors (and a Quora answer with 12k upvotes).
Arduino
Arduino is a microcontroller (aka programmable circuit board) created as a tool for fast prototyping, and a great gift for someone who wants to build their own gadgets or wants to become a better developer. It has been used to create thousands of different projects and applications, from a fingerprint scanning garage door opener to the EyeWriter 2.0.
Kindle
Amazon’s Kindle is a great gift for the engineers who enjoy reading. Better yet, you can pair this with one of the subscriptions from the previous section for a really awesome and thoughtful gift.
3D Printer
Turn ideas into objects that you can touch or print things to use around the house (here are 35 useful projects). Finder 3D is a reasonably priced printer that is quiet and has good print quality. Or, you can pre-order the NexD1 on Kickstarter — it’s the first multi-material and electronics printer (est. delivery is Oct 2017).
Portable Wi-Fi Router
Know someone who hates the feeling of not having internet?
For those who need internet everywhere they go, this magical device (aka a portable wi-fi router paired with a SIM card for data) is the ultimate gift for those who are constantly traveling or digital nomads on the go. Unless of course, they go somewhere with no reception…😱
To all the developers out there, Happy Valentine’s Day, from all of us at Codementor!
P.S. If you’re free after Valentine’s Day, do check out our upcoming Office Hour about “How to Unit Test With C#” by Matt Dixon, on Feb. 26th. It’s free, how bow dah?
This post was originally published on Codementor and has been slightly modified.
