Visual Studio is a very powerful editor. Everything that you can do in Visual Studio through menus you can do through the keyboard. In fact you can setup visual studio to use emacs shortcuts ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165509(VS.80).aspx ) and I'm sure it exists for Vim and etc.
People who believe the tools make the hacker are naive at best and would probably think the person with the best shoes wins the race. Not true when it comes down to it, the person driving those tools, whether they can type 60 wpm or use Emacs, is the one who is responsible for the creativity and output.
I think the author needs to step back and see if his priorities are in the right spot.
"We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist."
The implication here is completely in the negative.
Further, it's like saying "If you want to be a hacker, use English measuring units because we've never any met any great hackers who use the metric system."
Just because a bunch of rails hackers don't use an IDE doesn't imply the contrapositive.
I hear they exist, I've just never met them. That could be my sampling bias. None of the people around me relying on IDEs are great hackers.
Instead of arguing about what might have been implied in what I wrote, I'd rather you introduced me to people you consider great hackers that use an IDE. Know any?
The people who I work with whom I regard as great hackers work almost exclusively in the real time embedded space (industrial automation systems) and don't have web notoriety.
It is about using the right tool for the right job.
What you appear to be doing is using the right tool for
your job, then concluding that everyone should use
your tool for their job.
Here is a great IDE hacker:
John Carmack, ID Software, uses Visual Studio
I work at a game startup making their first PS3 title.
The C++ engine team does development in Visual Studio
and the tools guys do python outside of an IDE.
Do you really think that is evidence that all
the tools guys are superior to the engine guys?
It doesn't, both can be great and both can be mediocre.
People who believe the tools make the hacker are naive at best and would probably think the person with the best shoes wins the race. Not true when it comes down to it, the person driving those tools, whether they can type 60 wpm or use Emacs, is the one who is responsible for the creativity and output.
I think the author needs to step back and see if his priorities are in the right spot.