Nowadays, apart from a few web-based 'try it out' pages, learning a language usually requires installing it and several other packages and getting everything to work together and with your OS. This is hard, especially for beginners. In the meantime, you're using your computer for other important things.
If I could buy a pad with the major languages and text editors pre-installed, or even just with one language and one editor, I would. It would be separate from my browsing pad. Which would be separate from my gaming pad. Etc.
Hopefully pads will continue to get thinner and cheaper because they will be a lot of them lying around the house by 2020.