[evilduck]

The differences I see here are that

a) emacs vs. vim has been a holy war that has gone on since both were conceived and is a debate which is often older than the programmers discussing it. To be ignorant of recent language developments or internal acronyms is excusable, to be ignorant of vim/emacs is less so.

b) emacs and vim are not specific to any one language. Dropping acronyms that are non-specific to the topic (perl vs ruby, python, whatever) doesn't have some domain specific knowledge attached to it. If you're on either side of the debate, vim can be equally familiar or obscure.

[pwpwp]

Terminology has context.

Complaining about an article on perl.org not mentioning what CPAN is, is like complaining about an article on cars.com not mentioning what BMW is.

[nuxi]

Regarding a) - that was emacs vs. vi, not vim. vim was first released in 1991.