Best Gifts for Programmers

September 3, 2024

Hopefully you’ve found this page because you are on the hunt for the perfect gift for a certain special programmer. You have come to the perfect place.

We are also aware of how difficult it is to buy presents for us programmers. One of the reasons aiding in our decision to start the Underthreaded brand was this very problem. So here it is: a short but comprehensive guide to help you choose the perfect gift. Prices are accurate as of this article’s release date and are in the default currency shown when we checked.

Who is this post for?

This guide assumes you are a non-technical person looking to buy a relevant gift for a software developer — or one of the many hats a programmer may fit under. Hopefully we can help you avoid the pitfalls you can make when buying things you don’t know much about and lead you to the perfect gift!

But first — a quick note to be aware of this article be.

Be cautious with “Programming reference” gifts!

The ones with code snippets or other cliché tag lines like how we turn coffee into code. Clothes, mugs and any other trinkets have been plastered with unsubtle references to our craft. For some people this is great, and adds some variation to their wardrobe. It also makes it obvious that you code.

Other pitfalls here are:

You choose a reference to the wrong subfield of programming and your gift misses the mark.
If clothing: it may not fit the receivers personal style, or they may not feel comfortable wearing it.

Now, on to some more promising options…

Desk/Office art and accessories

Now, as we work our craft, we tend to sit at a desk. Be it at the office or at home, a lot of time is spent in front of a computer. This makes your giftee’s desk the perfect target for a great gift.

It’s hard to find the right thing. Maybe it’s as simple as some nice printed artwork to sit in the backdrop of a video call. Maybe it’s a little desk companion of some form. A bit cliché after being used ad nauseam in movies, but a picture frame of family and loved ones can go a long way.

The good thing about this is it doesn’t need to be overtly techy. You can use your own judgement of the look you think will be appreciated, and just choose it!

Books

Like many other groups, us techies have a penchant for knowledge. We love to learn more, so we can level up our skills. Books are the clear first place to start.

We believe the better quality programming text books come from:

Pragmatic Programmers
O’Reilly
Manning
MIT press

It can be worth checking Humble Bundle in case your “giftee” doesn’t mind e-books, they often have great book bundles. I do recommend physical books, however, as programming texts weirdly tend to work better in print!

The first thing you may notice while trying to buy books is that they can be quite specific. Compounded with not knowing a lot about what your giftee actually does, it can be hard to choose! Buying the right book is tough but doable. We’ll be writing a book gifting guide soon, so keep an eye out for that!

Outside of textbooks, it’s worth mentioning Wizard Zines by Julia Evans, renowned tech blogger. A phenomenal, short informational magazine with lovely art and well-distilled information.

Courses

Courses are a tricky one to get right and can be expensive. This is where buying access to subscription courses can make sense. Assuming the giftee can use them, get some value out of them and then not need to come back to them.

You can likely get the following self-service content platforms without asking specifics:

O’Reilly (comes with almost all the E books a software engineer could need)
Pluralsight
Front End Masters

You’ll still want to check they don’t have access to these through their company already. Ask something along the lines of “Does work pay for any training resources for you at all?”

For more particular course choices, you will probably need to discuss beforehand with the giftee. The choice is quite a personal thing and will vary wildly between different people.

Places to look for these are:

Udemy
Udacity
EdX

Software

Buying Software is tricky for programmers. We write it, we use it. We rarely want to pay for it.

The biggest thing, I think, preventing programmers as a whole from buying more software is that everything is subscription-based these days. Buying a subscription for someone isn’t always the best gift, as they may need to pay to continue using it after a time. Some subscriptions are better than others. For example:

Services that you can use and get value from without requiring to continue payments.
A subscription to educational material, where you can use it for a time, learn some things, and then move on while keeping what you learned.

These are rare finds in paid software.

All of these are only worth buying if your giftee already uses the free version of the product. Before you buy there are some questions you may want to ask before doing research into possible gifts.

You’ll need to ask questions like:

What do you use to do X?
- Some examples of X are: code editing, version control, network testing.
Do you pay for it? (don’t ask if they use the free version, or they’ll figure out you’re up to something)

Text Editors/Development Environments

Sublime Text - $99 - A great text editor, beloved by many.
JetBrains Developer tools - £55-£229
- Some people swear by them. JetBrains make some of the most powerful developer environments on the market. If your giftee already partakes then this might be a good idea!
- This is technically a subscription, but their perpetual fallback licence means that the giftee can still use the version of the editor that was paid for, even if they let the subscription run out!

Version Control Tooling

Handling the version history of code is a big deal in software engineering. Here are some of the paid tools worth looking at in this area.

Sublime Merge - $99 - A great software version control tool, from the same author as Sublime text.
Fork - $59.99 - Another great version control tool at a great price.
BeyondCompare - $35/$70 - not technically version control, but version control adjacent.
There are others, but they are mostly subscription based.

Software Utilities

An assorted list of other miscellaneous tools which I couldn’t fit under a larger category.

bruno - $19 - An open source API testing client with a one time payment option with some nice extra features.
Tailwind UI - £219 - Fantastic resources for any tailwind developer.
Sizzy - $499 - A specialist browser for web developers
Affinity Suite Sometimes developers need high quality tools for working on the non code parts of their projects. Affinity let you buy this for a one time fee, and if you hit a sale, you can get a very reasonably price!
Cloud credits if the giftee wants to do things in the cloud, or already spends money on the cloud.

Hardware

A great new-ish security tool which is gaining momentum towards the next step in personal passwordless access.

Peripherals

Keyboards, Mice, Headphones/Speakers, Laptop docks and other such gadgets are common tools of the trade. People often have fairly specific preferences when it comes to what they want and/or use. This is one you’ll need to talk to the giftee about to avoid making a big mistake!

I am big on having good lighting at my desk, so a good desk light is high on my list of priorities. None of this RGB fanciness, I go for a warm comfortable light to help try and reduce strain on my eyes. Tastes do vary, however!

We tend to like talking about or complaining about things to do with our setups, so it’s worth talking to the giftee about their desk setup to dig for clues to the perfect present!

Clothing

Underthreaded

We aim to be the go-to place when looking for gifts for your favourite developer. With us, you buy them clothing which also directly funds their community, and shows it. Any time you see our logo, you’ll know it is there as a result of some money going to projects which benefit the tech community. Those who don’t know about it will just see a sleek t-shirt or top and be none the wiser.

Other Software supporting goodies

Health

As stated before, us programmers tend to spend a lot of time in front of computers. Some may enjoy this, some may not. Regardless, it is a part of our lifestyles and can be rough on our health. You may scoff, but injuries and conditions can make progmramming as a job or hobby tough. Having struggled with back pain that kept me unable to sit for long periods of time for over 5 years, I know how frustrating it can be.

Possible gifts here are definitely quite personal so talking to the giftee is recommended, but you can look at things such as:

Yoga or Pilates classes
Personal Training
Physiotherapy/Chiropractor visits
Massage therapy

Some of these are easier to gift than others, and your location will dictate how these are priced. Your gift could be just a few sessions to let them try something out to see if it’s something worth continuing.

For me personally: years of physiotherapy, chiropractor visits and other treatment never stopped the pain. But 6 weeks of personal training (which cost less than the therapists I was seeing, though not claimable on my insurance) had me vastly improved. This is just anecdotal and certainly not expert advice, so I advise you to consult real experts before pursuing anything medical related. All I will say is your health is important.

Wrapping up…

I wrote this guide for a multitude of reasons. I realised it was very difficult to buy presents for me, and even I didn’t know what I wanted. Researching for this article definitely opened my eyes to some gifts I would like in the future. Hopefully you have found some ideas, and we also hope you wow your giftee with a great gift!

We will try to keep this article up to date as we come across gift ideas, so hopefully you can return here whenever you need more ideas!

Disclaimer: We have not been paid to recommend any of these, and many I do not use or have not used myself. Obviously, as a co-founder of Underthreaded, I have an incentive for you to buy my stuff. This blog as it stands is here to provide options for anyone looking to buy something as a gift or for themselves in the particular area of software engineering.

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