In one of the panels at Build somebody mentioned that expression trees would be interpreted at run time rather than JIT compiled so at least you have that.
Make Visual Studio Pro free or unify Express and allow extensions. Make ASP.NET & friends as easy to deploy on Linux as it is on Windows (or put some serious energy into mono).
Not sure if they are good suggestions or not for the business but they would certainly help me out!
It is possible to write your own contract abbreviators with Code Contracts so I would hope such functionality gets added to the new language. The post does mention however that object invariants are not supported so I do wonder how much Code Contracts are actually influencing it.
I'm not sure you are asking the right question. If you goal is to reduce eye strain which can lead to terrible headaches simply getting a monitor is not the total solution. I went through a few doctors and even an MRI only to discover accidentally that my new vision prescription and new phone/computer habits fixed it right up. You are getting older every day. This is what works for me, try it and see if it helps:
1) keep ALL screens at arms length from your face
2) code at night with a lamp on
3) 2x 27 inch displays (new toys!)
4) Look off into space here and there
I tried f.lux but I don't think it did anything for my sleep or eyes.
Where I work(ed) at the USGS most of us doing the tech work are actually contractors who are now basically on unpaid leave. Is this site yet another thing us contractors are excluded from?
Also I can't confirm if this is true or not but more senior federal employees have told me that in the past they have received back pay but us contractors are at a loss.
I also noticed this in IntelliJ when I went to copy some Java into a Scala project. As I began converting the Java code to Scala after the copy I was extremely confused when I found that the pasted code was already converted for me.
I'm not sure it would be worth it. While I think it is neat to finally see .NET popping up more I really don't see what this benchmark proves even if the C# and js both sorted the same type of data (string/floating point).
Don't open your mind too far; having an opinion is not always a terrible thing. You already said you don't like a large chunk of the typical tooling, no comment will make you like it. I like using Visual Studio even if it is not the most pragmatic choice, especially for open source. I am not a robot and I doubt you are either.
> what am I missing out on?
I'm not really sure what you know but the answer may be nothing. I have been playing around with code contracts and expression trees a lot recently, I think that stuff is neat. The thing is though that most other languages & frameworks have this stuff too.