I think the main strength is the fact that you are writing JavaScript both on the client side and the server side. You don't have to mentally switch languages or anything. Even though people don't think that it has an effect, it does. And while, even in JS, you'll write things slightly differently when doing client/server side work but it still would take less brain power than changing client/server paradigms as well as changing languages.
Actually, in Japan, a bunch of novels are written on phones.
Also, if you hit C-A-T on the cr48, it opens up a terminal. Have fun coding. Though, it works best if you ssh into a VPS or some other machine since you are limited on what you can install.
Yep, the konami code to get into dev mode has been in webos since the very beginning. I am talking webos 1.0.
Also, WebOs is great. I really like it and the UI but so far the devices have been fairly unimpressive. The original Palm Pre was good for about 3 months. After which android and iphone have gotten so many updates.
If the Palm Pre 3 lives up to it's ideal, it would definitely be worth a look but unfortunately, as cool as the OS is, the hardware just doesn't match.
I am quite happy with my Pre 2 (a gift by the developer program - they aren't sold in Brazil). There are a couple issues, as it appears to have never been tested here - GPS seems slow and may have a bug in its software, various reception weirdnesses (hard to get it to use 3G), but, overall, it's a very solid and responsive phone.
I expect the 3 to up that a notch. Right now, I prefer it over iPhone and Android, as actually doing things (as opposed as to opening programs) happens more fluidly.
I was deeply in love with WebOS on my 1st gen Pre. But - like you noted - the hardware was disappointing, and the Pre 2 should have been the Pre 1.5.
Even a year after switching to the iPhone 4 - there are still things I miss about my Pre's UI. If I could get WebOS on iPhone quality hardware, I'd be there in a second.
Companies are always in need to good programmers and Computer Scientists. Why not go to school for CS now while the economy isn't perfect and then you'll be out when it starts to pick up again.
However, because Chrome's extension API isn't as robust as Firefox's these extensions are very limited especially when compared to the feature-set that Vimperator and Pentadactyl provide you in firefox.
You can even set up an autocommand to auto enable pass through mode for specific websites and disable it when you move away from the page.
au LocationChange .* js modes.passAllKeys = /mail.google\.com/.test(buffer.URL) | /google\.com\/reader/.test(buffer.URL)
that created an autocommand based on the LocationChange event which is run against all websites and then it sets the modes.passAllKeys property to true if the url of the buffer matches that of the regex.
Maxauthority, the founder of the vimperator project wrote his thoughts comparing the two on vimperator's google code page (http://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/wiki/VimperatorVsPe...)
In general, it isn't much different, however, since vimperator version 3 it will start being much more different as vimperator is now trying to make the user interface as intuitive as possible while keeping the awesome modal controls from vim where as pentadactyl will still try to conform to vim.
Check out vimperator 3's design goals: http://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/wiki/Vimperator3Des...
I never liked cygwin much, though used it for a bit. For a long time I was a fan of portable ubuntu (http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableubuntu/) which allows you to run ubuntu as a service inside of windows. It was pretty good but it was still not the same as running linux natively or creating a VM that shares all the harddrives and you can ssh into by setting a static IP with your router.
You don't need to give up vim and grep on windows. gVim works great and since vim has the built-in vimgrep command, you can use that. You do lose the awesomeness of a shell like bash or zsh.
