GitHub vs. Amazon: 2025’s Gifts for Programmers and Sysadmins

For this year’s holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game “Oregon Trail.” (“Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West.”) That’s what’s different about 2025: Top sites and major brands are now targeting the “tech” demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts! And when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there’s been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture. So, with only a few shopping days left, The New Stack offers up its annual gift guide for geeks, with the hopes it’ll help you sort the gifting for even the grouchiest greybeard in your life. GitHub’s Copilot Christmas While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its “Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life” just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you’re wondering, “Should I push to production on New Year’s Eve?” GitHub recommends their new “GitHub Copilot Amazeball,” which it describes as “GitHub’s magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls … !” Copilot isn’t involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. “[Y]ou’ll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake,” GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. “Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!” And GitHub’s “Gift Guide for Developers” also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub’s mascots. But GitHub isn’t the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu (“One of our most sought-after items … “). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard. Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: “How the Geeks Stole Christmas.” Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all: Christmas for Coders Google searches on “Gifts for Programmers” now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called “Cooking for Programmers?” “Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language,” explains the book’s description, “making it not only delicious but educational as well.” From pizza toast to tomato coconut soup — and from Rust to Ruby — author Richard Wurzer urges you to “grab your apron and command line.” Transform daunting kitchen chores with the familiar comfort of code — like the JSON in this recipe for oven-roasted vegetables. name: "peppers", quantity: 100, unit: "g" The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console. There’s Java, JavaScript, Python, Perl, PHP, TypeScript and more. “Let’s get cooking and have fun,” suggests author Wurzer. And there’s even a recipe for espresso. Although if that’s not enough for the programmer in your life, buy them a candle with their favorite scent. Ghosts of Christmas Past But Amazon isn’t the only site selling programmer-themed gifts. Yes, Etsy has a whole category dedicated just to art prints for programmers — including one showing what “Programmer” would look like as a card in a Tarot deck. For your Christmas tree, four different sellers on Etsy claimed to be offering a homemade “software developer ornament”: The ornaments look nearly identical — and three of the accounts were suspiciously opened within the last three months — suggesting “gifts for programmers” has become its own attractive demographic for sellers. But the coder bear minifig is adorable. One Etsy artisan is even selling hand-blown glass Christmas tree ornaments that are shaped like ancient VHS tapes. And other sites are also selling coder-themed decorations for your favorite programmer’s Christmas tree. Hallmark also sells an ornament shaped like an Xbox 360 — and another shaped like a tiny vintage Nintendo Entertainment System. Although for something more challenging, Adafruit is selling its own DIY kits for colorful, high-tech ornaments. When ‘Techno Claus’ Visited CBS Everyone’s getting in on the action — even the CBS News site. One of its recent articles explains how “Techno Claus (who looks suspiciously like tech correspondent David Pogue), emerges from the fireplace” to share his surprisingly good list of tech gifts. For an added dose of holiday cheer, Pogue decided to write all of his reviews in rhyme. And thus we learn that for the shockingly low price of $15, you can get a Bluetooth-enabled beanie cap with a built-in headlamp. (” … This keeps you warm, and it lights up the way. It’s even got speakers — just pair and hit ‘Play!'”) Though the ultimate stocking stuffer would be this miniature TV set with a one-inch screen. (“You load your own movies; there is a remote. For too much TV, it’s a sweet antidote.”) And for $140, you put your iPhone in a case that gives it a physical keyboard like the BlackBerry. (“Like, nobody ever loves typing on glass, A problem this iPhone case tackles with class.”) T-Shirts for Sysadmins Marketing to the geek demographic is strange enough. But what’s even stranger is how specific it’s gotten. Amazon now sells T-shirts for sysadmins. There are even T-shirts for hobbyists working on homebrew projects. But some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.) But maybe it all proves that there’s something for everybody. That’s the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations. It’s just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim. So there’s another message to the abundance of gifts for the technical community: that the people who want you to smile are all around you. Everyone’s put a lot of thought into this — and it looks like they’re all having a lot of fun. And somewhere in there is some genuine appreciation for their favorite fellow geeks. So deck the halls, and drink an eggnog toast to your own favorite sysadmin. In the past, we’ve published our own gift guides for programmers and other tech folk. But in 2025, the rest of the world joined in the fun! The post GitHub vs. Amazon: 2025’s Gifts for Programmers and Sysadmins appeared first on The New Stack.