Why Learn Those Ancient Editors?

I went back and forth over whether I should embed the following tweet or just extract the quote from it. My remarks are about its contents and not the tweeter, who I don’t know and is probably a fine person and developer but I decided that it wasn’t fair to just steal his words without credit. I do want to emphasize that this is not an attack on Umbel, only a statement of my profound disagreement with a particular opinion of his.

It’s easy to ignore this sort of thing and I usually do because, as I’ve said before, choosing an editor is like choosing a mate: it’s nobody else’s business. Still, I find the sentiment behind it disturbing.

On the one hand, we can take the position that, fine, this advice will ensure that its adherents remain mediocre or, perhaps, “good enough” developers who leave the path to advancement open for those who are willing to put in the effort to learn and master their tools, even the “old” tools that, by surviving, have demonstrated their value. That’s not to say, “Use Emacs or die.” It’s not about using any editor in particular. It’s about not bothering to master—or even try—a tool just because it’s old, preferring, instead, an editor that while less powerful looks “prettier” and is easier to learn.

On the other hand, I think this advice is disastrous for all of us, not just the misguided who follow it. We all benefit when our colleagues are as good as possible and following this advice strikes me as a way of ensuring that they won’t be. Again, this is not to say that unless you use Emacs or Vim you’re a bad developer. It’s more about the attitude of “why bother?” and the smug assurance that “I know better than to waste my time on this old junk.” I don’t care if you use Emacs (or Vim) or not. I’d just like your decision to be an informed one.

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