MacBook Pro non-retina or retina?

So, I'm a junior in high school and I'm in the market for a new laptop for college (I know I should probably wait for newer models to come out, but Apple's specs don't seem to be going obsolete anytime soon). A little more background, I'm planning on majoring in software engineering, so if anyone has experience with that please share your tech advice! My choices are as follows:
MacBook Pro non-retina with: 2.5 GHz i5, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD
Or
MacBook Pro retina: 2.8 GHz i5, 8GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
(Side question; for college will I really need 1 TB or 512 GB? I have another laptop that I plan to use as my personal laptop, while this MacBook will be primarily for school. I just like have a little more room to work with, but if you think 256 will work please let me know)
A major factor in my decision is price, with the non-retina coming in at $1,134 and the retina at either $1,399 or $1,699 depending on the SSD size recommended, if recommended. The biggest factor would probably be HDD vs SSD, is the SDD worth the extra $400-600?

http://store.apple.com/ca_edu_93120/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MD101LL/A&step=c onfig
Right there, 13 inch non retina pro with the i7 upgrade 130$ but with the retina model I can't upgrade it all as the base model is 1249 and can't go more than that, with apple education I can get the pro non retina for 999 then 130 for i7 upgrade and I could upgrade the ram later on I'm just wondering how will the games run on the non retina i7 vs base model retina model which I can't upgrade later on

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