Granted, programmers have a simple workload: web browser, text editor, terminal, done.
One thing I like about Unity is how keyboard driven it can be: the application search is not too bad, and the "HUD" feature actually seems appealing except that it stole my right-hand-alt, which I use as an emacs's "meta" key. But other than that, I played with it a bit and thought it was a great way to get away from the hierarchical pull-down menu, which I loathe.