u/fragrance08

My uni starts in around 2 months and i am looking a good laptop to buy at a budget around 1500 usd , my major is btec program engineering and then top year computer science bachelors , i have no idea what to look for in a laptop , i know that macbook air is a good option maybe but people are talking about linux windows and weird app names and such and i have no idea what that means , if someone could give me a laptop that would serve me good in the next four years for those majors that would be ideal . Lmk any ideas thoughts or recommendations

Will a macbook air m5 be enough for my CS major in terms of apps and software , i was warned about throttling and laggs when the mac gets heated and software limitation , if anyone has experience with this lmk

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE
Country
[USA]
Budget
[≈ 1500]
Are you open to refurbs/used options?
[No]
Screen size
[Any]
Weight limit
[light weight would be ideal but not super important]
Purpose
[software engineer major]
Form factor
[Standard/Clamshell (a regular laptop).]
Intended usage
[4 years of uni , i just dont want to worry about it not being strong enough to handle the apps i might use in swe , i am probably gonna use apps like Visual studio ,IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm , i would need to do testing and local runtimes on it , maybe even build systems and devops platforms ]
Desired battery life
[not super important but preferred to be decent enough to where i dont need to have it plugged in all day and night ]

I am starting my first year in software engineering major and need a good laptop to handle my university years easily , i thought about getting a macbook air m5 but some people say i will struggle with that due to limitations compared to windows and performance drops when heating up , lmk if its a good choice or not and any other options for this major ?

Im an athlete so picking the right size is important , a couple years ago when i was super fat i had to get a large ( nike tech ) but now that i lost alot of weight i fit it very weird , when i wear it its like my hips stick out , now i would go for a medium but i was told i would do better with a small any tips on that and how to pick the exact right size cuz the nike’s sizing is kinda weird and not really accurate, ( also if theres a way to shrink or go to a tailor or smth for my old tech let me kno )