Lots of programmers, myself included, learned relevant coding skills on hardware far less capable than what you describe. You don’t need a Ferrari to learn how to drive a car. The hardware has very little to do with learning programming.
So why did you mentioned "And forget about crafting professional artisanal code on that cramped toy setup."? I will be using Windows in dual boot with Ubuntu, and if VM allows to activate Windows from a VM, I may remove Windows completely from this laptop.