As pointed to by Don Kiely, there are a couple of excellent posts by recent converts to the non-admin devloping "lifestyle":
It's great to see more and more developers give this a try, along with creative ways to get around some of the inconveniences that you may face at first (like "how do I get a calendar to come up to see the date?"). Go read these posts, plus Aaron Margosis' great series on this topic.
