Xeons are NOT faster than their i7 equivalent. They are meant for high availability, reliability and of course, to be used with ECC memory. Just go for the model with the fastest i7. Do not just trust me on this one, check real world benchmarks between them. You will save tons of money. You are not doing databases or programming while debugging on virtual machines or such. There's no need for server components when doing this kind of work. Unless of course, it's a multi threaded application where an i7 doesn't have the core count you need.
The only difference in what you expect to do with them, would be that a Xeon (most of them) can be paired with 2 or more CPU's of the same model, while the i7 can't. It depends on your budget.