In a new article on OnLamp.com (from O'Reilly) today, there's a bit of talk on what developers really want when it comes to how they do their work.

Irrespective of the language programmers choose for expressing solutions, their wants and needs are similar. They need to be productive and efficient, with technologies that do not get in the way but rather help them produce high-quality software. In this article, we share our top ten list of programmers' common wants and needs.

Among those on the list are: "Ease of Use and Short Learning Curves", "Seamless Migration and Transparent Upgrades", "Comprehensive Functional Modules", "Performance-Optimized Blueprints", and one that's gaining more and more momentum - "Open Standards Compliance".

What kinds of things do you look for in your development environment as you do your work? Is there a set of scripts that you just couldn't live without?