Kind of off topic, but this article just reminded me, I was thinking how nice it would be for a linux distro to be made for programmers. Bundled with every bit of programming language (from c to hakell and back), the standard editors with their syntax highlighting (the .vimrc already set up a little), cool special tools that maybe only serve a special purpose (stuff like gnu radio..) I was just thinking it'd be nice to have one big package, a here ya go, have at it, kinda linux. Maybe even with some alternative (but vetted) how-to documentation. For some reason I just can't get used to the flow and syntax of Man pages... And it can leave out lots of the fancy gui sidebars and stuff (not sayin get rid of the gui, just dumb it down, I'm here for the terminal, and maybe some IDEs.. maybe).
Read the koan in the above comment again. Your vision of a Linux distribution "for programmers" is very likely different from my vision, let alone that of Dennis Ritchie or Linus Torvalds. This approach is the fundamental mistake made by other operating systems: to assume you know what the user wants/needs, and give it to them in one nice shiny box with a bow on it. It would be so convenient... right?
The core philosophy of Unix is to build tools that do one job well. By combining those tools, it is then possible to build great things. Do not assume that means you can hide the tools away and just give people the great thing, and realize it is naive to believe that you can solve everyone's problem by creating the one true master editor/program/os that combines all the great things from previous attempts, but this time "gets it right".
