Answer 1

For programming? You could get by with minimal amount for programming. However, depending upon the type of program you're creating, you may want to have more RAM/GFX power if it requires such.

I'm a game developer, so I utilize 16-32GB of RAM for most things that I work on, along with an 8-core CPU and 1070 GPU. If ALL I had to do was the programming side and not deal with the engine/graphics/etc... then I could easily get by with 2-4GB of RAM.

What type of programming are you doing?