Christmas Gift Ideas For The Programmers and Engineers In Your Life
Engineers are very particular people, so buying gifts for them can be difficult. Although there are quite a few good options out there that will work for anyone, this article provides some suggestions for gifts you can get for that person in your life.
Engineering notebooks
As engineers, there will be a lot of small notes, diagrams or doodles that need to be done to get the job done. So why not invest and get them a nice notebook they can use daily on the job with a friendly call back to what they are doing, like in the linked product?
This is a great gift you can keep topping up on year after year with more exciting notebooks, and they will always get used eventually. If you are environmentally conscious about paper usage, you can get notebooks that allow you to switch out the pages for a fresh set so you can keep the skin for years to come.
The useless box
Every engineer has come up against that moment when they are deep into a problem, thinking away, but they need something to fiddle with to keep that thinking ball rolling.
Studies have even found that fiddling stimulates your thinking and increases your recall. These “useless boxes” come in many different shapes and sizes with a single or many switches and various patterns they run through.
Circuit Board Coasters
Once again, any good software is developed mainly with coffee, lots and lots of coffee. So to keep all your desks water ring free, these circuit board coasters are a great touch to keep your workspace clean.
For the following product, they use upcycled circuit boards to make sure what can be diverted from landfill is and can get a second use in our homes.
Raspberry PI Starter Kit
Engineers are natural tinkerers to find those solutions to the big problems in the world, So a perfect gift is a sandbox that can provide them with endless possibilities to build things. The following gift is a Raspberry Pi computer that can create simple machines and automation using the provided sensors and connectors in the kit. With this kit, you can make many things based on guides, such as motion sensors and arcade machines, or create your inventions.
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
Every engineer is a tinkerer at heart, so they will always need screwdrivers and an assortment of different bits to take apart and repair (or have a poke around) some of those products or electronics around the house.
The iFixit toolkit is an excellent pack that could include everything you might need to take apart almost any electronic or consumer product sold today. And if you ever need any guides on putting the thing back together without extra screws at the end, you can always check out their helpful teardown or repair guides for many everyday tech products today.
Udemy Course
For any engineer, constant learning is an important part of the profession. But especially in the software industry, as the landscape changes so fast, keeping up with new technologies and software frameworks can help them build new things and stay productive as engineers.
With a Udemy gift card, the engineer in your life can select from thousands of courses ranging from topics in software engineering and even topics outside of the engineering profession, such as business, finance and everyday life skills.
Blue Screen of Death T-Shirt
If you have been using computers for a while, you may be familiar with the blue screen of death and the dread it can cause when you see it depending on your current work. But it would also make a fantastic graphic for a T-shirt for the engineer in your life. Check out the following product that will get giggles around the office.
Bev by BLACK+DECKER
If a service goes down or you successfully release that new feature, this little machine will make celebrating that much easier. The Bev by BLACK+DECKER makes making your favourite cocktails easy with their capsule and your favourite spirits to start mixing up drinks in seconds.
Miracle time cube
Keeping your focus can be nice and easy with timers, be they 5, 10, 15 or longer, to keep you focused on what needs to be done.
Check out the following product for a sleek cube you can use as a timer with a simple turn to the face you want to use for the timer value.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, you should now have some gift-giving ideas for the engineer in your life. It can be challenging, but you should see a theme between these gifts of providing something technical and fun in a single package.
If you want to check out some other posts on software and engineering, you can find some of the posts below.
