I consider myself a serious developer and I'm perfectly happy with Gnome 3. It's clean, simple and allows me to focus on what's really important -- my editor and terminal.
Having your own opinions is fine but please do not generalize.
I really wanted to be happy with Gnome 3, but the focus issues (strange stacking order issues, sometimes closing dialogs would leave no window with focus, launching certain apps with global hotkeys wouldn't bring them to the front) made it impossible for me to keep track of what I was trying to do. I'm curious if maybe there's something about my setup that's different than everyone else (because I know there are plenty of people who are happy with it) or if maybe I'm more keyboard oriented or something.
The default GNOME 3 that comes with Fedora 20. My needs from a DE is minimal. I spend 90% of my time alt-tabbing between my browser and editor with my terminal a F12 away (Guake is awesome).
GNOME 3 simply gets out of my way and lets me focus on what is important.
Having your own opinions is fine but please do not generalize.