[PKeeble]

The modern IDE is chock full of features. So many that many less common edits are automated if you know the right keystrokes. It takes years to master all of the features and those features are constantly expanding month on month.

An IDE like Eclipse can take 1 GB of RAM to run on a decent sized project. Not only that but it will happily consume 4 CPUs as it verifies the code, and it'll only reach its full potential of resource usage on an SSD. But 1GB of RAM is less than £20, a quad core around £80 and a decent dev SSD for less than £200. Compared to the time cost of learning another tool this is absolutely nothing. Those tools in your IDE are there to save you time and a bit of hardware to be able to use those features quickly is worth every penny for the hours they save you.

Learning your IDE well matters, the resource constraints are easily fixed with minimal cash outlay. The difference between a MB and a GB for your editor is irrelevant when the difference is such a vast array of features and plugins which can save a lot of time.

Emacs and vim have a place in the world but an IDE is a vital part of a modern development set-up because of the productivity it brings. If you are going to develop software seriously make sure you buy hardware capable of doing it so you can use the best tools at hand.