I don't own an Eee, nor have I played with one. I can say, though, as a person interested in getting into IT or programming, the Eee is a really bad choice. Yes it's a computer, and it's cool in its own right, but it's not made to be a replacement for a desktop or laptop, instead it's geared as more of an "on the go" system. That alone should be enough to make you pick a budget laptop over an Eee. Plus, the Eee may be fast enough to do what most people want to do, but a budget laptop will be much faster and will therefore likely make for a better "every day" computer, not a travel companion. Plus, the screen resolution is the same as the N800/N810, it's just a bigger screen. You already have the portable computing angle covered with the N800, now you need a real computer.

If you're not hooked on the portable, whet polossatik said is absolutely brilliant. Build (don't buy) a desktop. You learn quite a bit from researching components and putting it all together, and in the end you'll spend less and get more than if you built a laptop. His/her suggestion about VMWare is also brilliant; the best way to learn anything is to do it. If you chose Linux as your main OS, you could also use VirtualBox for a lot of your needs (an OSS alternative to VMWare). Virtual environments aren't quite the real thing, but they are a great learning tool. You could probably do the same with a laptop that's slightly better than budget, but building your own system definitely has a lot of merit; again, if you can deal with your machine not being portable. That's my 2 cents I guess.

As an aside, why does every topic involving the Eee have to degrade into a debate about the Eee vs a budget laptop? The guy asked a simple question, why can't anyone give him a simple answer? The Eee has its place, and it fits the need of some people very well, others not so much, and still others not at all. Fanboy vs. anti-fanboy helps nobody....