Professional developers usually have an absurdly powerful computer and peripheral setup. In the office you’ll see multi monitor setups galore; at conference you’ll see multitudes of expensive laptops. Some developers obsess about exactly the right keyboard - after all things like the DAS keyboard exist because people actually buy them.

A friend recently asked me how she could become a ‘coder’. She had no prior experience but had recently started to modify the website for her company and has a working knowledge of search engine optimisation. She started asking about expensive courses and generally looking at a large spend to get going.