What type of computer builds do you guys run?
I am taking programming next year in highschool and plan to major in computer science.
I also need another reason to get a desktop, lol.

My gaming rig has 8gb ram, 750w psu, geforce gtx 550ti, intel i7 cpu, ocz 120gb ssd (for os and games), 1 tb hdd, some kind of gigabyte mobo ( can't remember which one exactly )

However.. Ever since I bought my laptop I use it 95% of the time and I also do all of my programming on it. If you plan on going to school, I would recommend buying a nice laptop since you'll find it more useful.

I think a better place to post this thread would've been in the computer building discussion forum but at least it's semi relative to programming, unlike some of shit people post here.

Lol, I was just wondering if it requires a powerful computer.
All I have at the moment is a Toshiba Sat, a6-4400, with 8gb of 1600 ram.

No you can program on pretty much any computer even if it's a huge piece of shit. The computer you have at the moment is more than enough.

yeah i do most of mine on a vm, so you know its underpowered.

It kind of also depends on what IDE you use. If you use some power hungry IDE like Visual Studio and add database development on top of that... you'll want a good processor and enough ram for compile time. oh and a SSD helps.
Laptops are definitely good enough for programming, my work only uses laptops and we have docking stations to get 2 monitors connected.

My work laptop is running a core i7, 8gb ram with a 120gb SSD and I have no issues.
It sounds like your laptop will be just fine for programming.