You're responding about the wrong Surface. The Pro's (and the Windows 8 Pro tablets) are the only ones you can find that can actually self-host their entire development environment. That's why I carry around a Surface and a Kindle Fire (soon to be replaced with a Nexus 7), if the 7 could run Eclipse or Android Studio then I'd be singing a different tune (or if the iPad could run XCode, the Windows RT tablets Visual Studio). I still go to a full setup at home/work. But I don't want to be cooped up inside all the time (and since I'm too cheap to upgrade my desktop to an SSD, I often just plug the surface into a monitor and keyboard/mouse as it takes less time to boot to a usable interface).

I live in an apartment without a garage, and a slanted parking spot to boot. Meanwhile, I can drive down the road to the mechanic not 5 mins away, and then my regular mechanic will often give me a ride to work gratis (though I tend to leave a nice tip) or a co-worker can pick me up. In the summer I tend to just shove my bike in my car and bike to work after dropping my car off. Even when I've gone to a larger place (once my car broke down at night and I had little choice but to have it towed to Firestone) they offered me a ride to work at no extra charge (I just assumed it was par for the course). And, for what it's worth, American here - professional software engineer (not "retail"). The one downside is that I can't really walk because there aren't sidewalks on all the roads and the bus/public transit around here is horrific.

I don't consider myself the best programmer, but I graduated last May and by September had a decent job as a game developer at a fairly decent pay. Don't let what other people tell you get you down (I sat through a lot of programmers telling me that it was a joke career path, but it's just the right combination of math, physics, and code to keep me excited even when I have to put in the long hours).

http://etoileos.com/ seems to be what you're looking for. I'm trying to get a new test box up and running with it (I'm ready for a paradigm shift so I'm setting up GoboLinux and trying to get Etoile and GNUStep running in it) and possibly getting semi-active with its development. I totally agree with you though, what I love about the command line isn't the typing but how interoperable it is. I even pull command line utilities into graphical programs I wrote, and try to at least partially expose some operations in my graphical tools to the command line.

Only if the words have Latin roots of course. The plural of octopus is octopodes since it comes from the Greek oktapous, but it seems that octopuses is generally better accepted (odes is kinda weird in English).

you could have a screen with a larger surface area of the device itself. Think of a scroll, two stiff wooden pieces with a flexible piece of paper in the middle. You could theoretically make a tiny device with the e-paper rolled into one end and your rigid components in another (or some similar setup).

Because we already have a decent operating system and are looking for a text editor.