Indeed, if it works for you, then it is good. In 1990's I used to have ~/dev in school's Sparcs running SunOS, as I needed some device files that weren't avail

Indeed, if it works for you, then it is good. In 1990's I used to have ~/dev in school's Sparcs running SunOS, as I needed some device files that weren't available in /dev. But I was able to mknod them. I've been also toying with chroots quite a lot and there dev is also quite essential for its original purpose. Therefore "dev" is like a reserved keyword for me in *nix systems. Personally I use ~/w (like "work") or ~/code mostly. I've had ~/dev once for storing projects, but I had to rename it as it was distracting (to me) :)