Will a 13" MBA last for 2 years?

Will a 13" MBA last for 2 years?

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Sure, if you want it to.

Since you will be doing "heavy programming" I suggest you go for the Macbook Pro. The Macbook Air is not for heavy technical use, it's for travelers and light computer use.

Plus, why are you planning on selling it while you didn't even buy it yet?

If you're going to do programming, you simply CANNOT buy the MBP 13". Why? because 1200x800 resolution is simply too low to work on (I know from experience). The MBA's 1400x900 is the absolute minimum, unless you're planing to hook it up to an external monitor, of course.

That being said, the problem with the MBA is that you're capped at 4gb RAM. Sure, 4gb might be enough now a days, but perhaps not in 2 or 3 years down the road.

Tough decision there if longevity is your #1 factor.

The Pro is more expandable, and the raw power is more likely to hold up than the Air.

But coming from my own experience, I would say get the Macbook Air instead of the Pro. The extra screen resolution is actually more important than you may think. It lets you see more of the screen while you are debugging your application. Other than that, the Air is thinner and lighter than the Pro, so lugging it around wouldn't be that much of a pain and you have more room for other things like textbooks.

In fact, if you can find it, I'd recommend that you get a 2010 Macbook Air with 4GB of RAM.

Some of these are major reasons for consideration:

1) You can revert back to Snow Leopard in case you don't like how OSX Lion turns out to be.
2) Under Snow Leopard, you can use Coolbook to optimize processor load and frequency as well as voltage. The 2011 doesn't support Coolbook, and there is no word on the author when they will ever be supported. It's actually a very important point to consider if you care about temperature, and fan noise.
3) The 2010 model uses an nVidia GPU, which gets better support under Windows as opposed to the Intel HD 3000 used in the new 2011 model. That is should you wish to run Windows on your Mac for other reasons.
4) It's cheaper than the 2011 model. Up to $300 cheaper for the base model. You'll likely only have to pay around $1000 as opposed to $1300, and I don't think the Macbook Air 2010 model would go for less than $500 in 2 years... especially the 13" model.