I know this post was designed to create a Slashdot civil war, but I was always a Notepad++ lover until I saw someone coding in a modern IDE with vim keybindings. Now, in addition to using vi, vim, gvim and macvim, I use vimium in Google Chrome, and vim plugins for both Visual Studio and IntelliJ (Windows and Mac). It is just crazy how much faster you can code without going to the mouse. When I get on someone else's computer, I just die inside a little. Also, don't forget to remap your Caps Lock key to Esc. It's a registry setting on Windows and there's a little program called PCKeyboardHack on the Mac.

I wonder how many little pieces of formerly analog SLR camera the Kuwaiti authorities could produce into while you tried (in English, probably) desperately to explain the difference between compact flash and photon interaction with silver hadride crystals.

I have to program Java and C#. Typically porting code back and forth between the two. Because I have the unique position of having to write the same code in both of those languages, I can tell you that C# rocks Java's world. It's support of generics is far superior. I can write 20 or 30 lines of code in Java in about 5 or 10 using LINQ in C#. Don't knock it until you try it. Don't let your dislike of Microsoft bias your evaluation of a language.

It's like putting a trailer hitch on a Bentley.