I use Terminal, Emacs, Firefox, etc., pretty much the standard setup.
The programming environment is the only bundle of apps that need to be specifically arranged for me. They pretty much always sit positioned where I want them, and I bring up other apps when I want to do other stuff, and hide them when I want to get back to programming. I never really hide my coding apps; I just bring other apps on top and hide them.
It's nice too to always know that Cmd-F1 will bring up Firefox, no matter what is going on.
But this is definitely a user preference thing, and specific to how I like working.
The programming environment is the only bundle of apps that need to be specifically arranged for me. They pretty much always sit positioned where I want them, and I bring up other apps when I want to do other stuff, and hide them when I want to get back to programming. I never really hide my coding apps; I just bring other apps on top and hide them.
It's nice too to always know that Cmd-F1 will bring up Firefox, no matter what is going on.
But this is definitely a user preference thing, and specific to how I like working.