What kind of minimum and recommended specs should one have on a laptop to be able to get into coding. I need to buy a new laptop anyway and I’m looking at stuff between $500-700.
You don’t need a crazy powerful computer, you can get by with basically anything. Text editor, browser, command line, not much else needed. That can mean a lot though, in terms of memory/processor power, so more power the better. But $5-700 will get you a factory-refurb Dell XPS-13 from the Dell outlet store, which is one of the best laptops in existence. Refurb XPS-15 are a bit more, but you should be able to get one within budget.
You can get a very decent new Acer Swift (8th gen i7, discrete Nvidia graphics) for within budget as well. The Dell’s are much better computers though, and they run Linux perfectly which is something to consider when buying a non-Apple laptop that will be used for development.