[teresko]

Ease of use does not come from a distro. It comes from how good you are at setting up desktop environment.

As for developers paradise, i honestly doubt that debian-like system would be what you need. If you are serious about writing code, then you most likely will require custom compilations of programs. And ability to recompile them with same setting, when new version comes out (and as soon as possible).

Additionally, most of the "user friendly" debians have this notion of automatic updates. I honestly hope that you can see what harm can come from this.

I would recommend for you to check some other distros and not to limit yourself to debians.

P.S. if something is "hard" to install or maintain, it only means that you have decided not to send time on understanding how it works.