As a developer, I can get more done with cscope, gdb, a few well placed printfs, and hand written makefiles than most people get done with integrated, graphical development environments. The best tool here is personal choice. I can sow a field with ox and plow too, but given a choice of tools I'll take a tractor. Linux Drivers Require Kernel Rebuilds Device drivers intended for end user installation require kernel recompiles for Linux because driver authors tend to like living on the bleeding edge of kernel development.
Youth loves a challenge.
Targeted development is a new arena for driver authors, but it requires stable distributions to become widespread. Driver authors need to understand who their target audience is. Forget the killer application. The rest, by means of competing projects, will take care of itself. The one area where we have a serious problem is Web browsing.