You don't just have to jump to kill -9 like that. At least give the misbehaving program a chance to get it's affairs in order and a chance to say goodbye to it's children with a standard kill command.
I personally LOVE Linux SIGKILL as it can save me so much trouble. I was running puppy linux on a shitty old laptop and just browsing the internet could fill the RAM. Having this SIGKILL allowed me to immediately kill any offending program and surgically control what was open and what was closed with hotkeys (random script i wrote). I don't dream of even knowing what's actually open or closing on Windows.