Mostly reasonable advice. An important step was missing though. Editor / IDE setup anyone? And in regards to that, I would like to point out one particular thing that might seem trivial. Color scheme. I think most people don't realize how much a proper color scheme helps reduce eyestrain, and hence general irritableness. Not to mention saving your eyes in the long run... High contrast between foreground and background color tires your eyes faster. That's why you should never use (0,0,0) or (255,255,255) as your background color.