Before reading I had imagined this article was going to be about improving fundamental skills rather than configuring text editors and IDEs. At least for me, th

Before reading I had imagined this article was going to be about improving fundamental skills rather than configuring text editors and IDEs. At least for me, the former has had a far larger impact on productivity and I consider those my real tools. Daily practice and learning (see Mike Acton's discussion about this) has had a huge impact on my long term productivity. For editors/IDEs I've found the most effective thing is to find something where the defaults do most of what you want, learn the key bindings and then get on with work. EDIT: also, if I were to concentrate on sharpening these kind of tools, i.e. software, editors are not close to the most important tools I use. More important are version control, debugger, profiler and data transfer tools.