[yodsanklai]

> You can learn Vim instead, but please avoid IDEs. Easy-to-use, lowest-common-demoninator, "thoughtless" tools actually seem to be making people dumber.

I would argue that you should learn both. It really depends on the context. Vim/emacs are nice, but for certain tasks, IDEs are more suitable. I would also recommend to master your OS shortcuts, we edit a lot of text outside vim/emacs.

[discreteevent]

John Carmack uses an IDE all the time. Didn't seem to affect his productivity or ability to fix things at a very low level.

In general I don't think the editor really makes much difference. The article emphasises tools at a slightly higher level - more algorithmic. I think this is more important.

[swaggyBoatswain]

I would argue that learning both is important, but its always better to learn the dumb tools first (IDE). Dumb tools were made for a reason because they are the lowest common denominator and therefore easier to get things done. Your time spent on tooling could have been used elsewhere.

VIM / emacs are great if you work in a unix environment, but as a windows user Id rather have nice GUI tools. Requires less memorization to do the same tasks.

I would also argue against memorizing shortcuts as well, and if you do, only a select few that you often use. Rather have a quick reference file on hand for these shortcuts to memorize.

[TeMPOraL]

If you subscribe to the view that Emacs is an OS disguised as an editor, you can get pretty far with it on Windows too. I do recommend that.

[flukus]

I'd begrudgingly agree, but learn vim/Emacs/kak first, along with Unix command line tools. They cripple your understanding of many important things if that's all you know and they impose a lot of limits.