Wow. Water is #1 -- and not a single mention of jolt or mountain dew. What a weak generation of hackers -- you know where the term "flow state" came from? David Lightman used to drink his own urine during long coding sessions. That's a scientific fact.
Ha. Old Greggs think alike. Old school programmers, those who created web servers, compilers and the universe, used to drink coffee, smoke pot and read man pages. Today's generation drinks water, smokes ground PG essays and watches screencasts instead of reading proper documentation.
Well, depends where you live... I spent a summer in Santa Clara in a really crappy apartment and the water always developed this weird white film (or was it a precipitate? I forget) if you let it sit. I considered it very suspicious and did not drink water from the tap at home - I got my fill at work.
2 weeks ago I would have said "coffee" - used to drink about 6-8 cups a day between 3 am and 7 pm (working hours). Over the past 2 weeks I've switched over to mostly water and 2 cups of coffee per day at most and its unbelievably fantastic.
Water for me has to be room temperature though. Not sure why.
H20 ... chilled. Used to be Coke (2-4 cans a day) then coffee (3-5 mugs a day). These days an afternoon coffee and snack bar is a once or at most twice a week treat. Typically after eradicating some extra perfidious bug!
I do this, as well. And during/after exercise, I'll drink a 50/50 mix. I don't know whether it's the "proper" approach, but it keeps my stomach settled whereas a lot of plain water can start to feel "heavy" particularly in the stomach. I'm thinking particularly of long (outdoor) cycle rides, back when I did that.
