Just some thoughts:

My first semester learning chinese was in traditional. I then switched colleges and I switched to simplified because that's what the teacher taught and I intended to go to china in the future.

However I have decided to learn traditional in addition to simplified as many of my friends use traditional, and many (if not most) chinese communities (stores etc) use traditional here in the US. I'm also considering going to study in taiwan instead.

What I have come to realize is that learning traditional characters in addition to simplified is very confusing! simplified tends to use the same character for two different definitions, where was traditional will have a different character for each word. Although that makes extra characters to learn (and these also having more strokes), it is still less confusing and easier to recognize the context and meaning of characters. An example or two would be 旅遊/旅游 and 游泳/游泳， or also 干/乾 and 干/幹.

Am I the only to think that traditional is nearly easier to learn than simplified? More strokes doesn't necessarily make it harder IMO.

I have always preferred traditional characters over simplified ones and always will, I suppose. I'm not experienced enough to confirm that they are actually confusing, but when in November 2010 I started studying both traditional and simplified characters, I often wondered how the latter may be easier than the former. One example that caught my eye back then would be 没 沒...

At Leiden University, students would start learning traditional characters during their first year and add simplified ones in their second year. Now, at Ghent University - I hope to enroll there sometime soon - one is supposed to do both at the same time: simplified characters for modern Mandarin and traditional characters for Classical Chinese.

Currently, I am just writing characters each day and hope to have the New Hsk lists finished by the end of September which is the start of their academic year.

Don't omit those real simplifications:

艺 藝
还 還
坏 壞
凿 鑿
汇 彙
边 邊
台 檯 etc.
迁 遷
...

With that in mind, I am quite sure that a beginner will be able to learn a somewhat larger number of simplified characters (compared to traditional chars) if the same amount of time is invested.

That being said, traditional characters sometimes tend to be slightly more logical, but often they are (apparently) not, as with 痴 vs. 癡 or 耻 vs. 恥.

Generally said, while _writing_ trad. chars takes more time (apart from 强 vs. 強 ...), _memorizing_ is often almost as easy or even easier (as with 帘 vs. 簾， 阳 vs. 陽, 头 vs. 頭, 观 vs. 觀) once you know most of the basic components and radicals. Traditional characters tend to exploit these better.

I think it's partly because we are learning as adults. We generally want to see reasons and patterns in things, because our memories work better like that. Most Chinese people learn to write as children, and don't concern themselves with the way characters are made up. I'm not sure how true this is, but I have read that it is very common for Chinese people not to know the meanings even for the radicals.I think I'm trying to say that "simplifying" (by using fewer strokes) is very beneficial for native-speaking children, and very possibly not helpful to non-native adults.
Rachael.

I am currently only concentrating on learning 简体字 but will begin adding in the corresponding 繁体字 later on - right now it's just a bit too much for me.

One interesting article I read recently does a good job describing the various cultural, academic and political elements of the debate around 简体 versus 繁体 and what the future might bring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters

@rgwatwormhill, very true. My girlfriend who is from Taiwan never actually cared for character composition. Whenever I asked about a character, I would mention some or all of its components to describe it to her and she never realized that it was that way until I mentioned it.

@cmccorvey, Good luck! It's pretty much what I was doing and now that I am adding traditional, it's a very hard phase for me (including the fact that I have no more chinese classes to take until I transfer to a four-year university next year.. that's two years without chinese classes although I'm a chinese major).

Obviously there are advantages to both sides, but I think I found my definitive camping site: traditional writing!

@LaughingHorseman, you were in Leiden Uni? Me too！:D

@William, That's nice. What year? I was there, only briefly in 2005. Did you both start and finish there?

Traditional definitely look much cooler, but who would seriously prefer to write an essay using traditional instead of simplified (especially if it was about 龟/龜s)?

I sure would :-D