For most users, we recommend solid-state drives (SSDs) over old-fashioned hard drives simply for their snappier performance. But for programming, where you may be calling up several files at once or storing a huge number of support files and programming tools, speed is essential. An SSD is a must—a traditional spinning hard drive will only slow you down. Capacity is another question. When you need to store a lot of data locally, more storage is also a plus. While budget machines may offer 256GB or 512GB SSDs, you'll probably need more than that, so we recommend a minimum of 1TB.