Recommendations for hardware: A relatively normal computer. I would avoid exotic hardware. If you've got an old computer kicking around, give it a try on that. Or, eBay is full of used corporate Dells that will do the job for pocket change.

I'm a fan of Linux Mint; I've been daily driving it for a decade now, but really don't worry that much about distro or DE, if you're really looking to get into programming and such you'll probably spend a lot of time in the terminal anyway.

Oh I almost forgot: Welcome to the Linux community!