Did you just call Emacs primitive? You judge the only piece of programmer productivity tool worth using because someone whose job is to push development tools dismissed it from a podium, 8 years ago? Gosling might have discovered Emacs, but 8 years ago, he was on a payroll to push the One Platform. At the time, Sun and its staff had plans for world domination and had no trouble desecrating what anyone held dear, in order to create a one universal platform, with programmers interchangeable and replaceable as spark plugs; a heavily customized development environment would pose a threat to this.
The benefits of mastering your tools are economical and felt in your pocket and productivity. Every minute you spend waiting for an IDE to move its fat hind around to get something done, is a minute lost from your working day. If your aim is to be productive, and not just "replaceable", then there is no need to shackle yourself with a lowest common denominator environment.
You don't spend 100% of your time writing code in one language or tech stack, in an IDE; there are hours spent researching and taking notes, writing documentation, coding in a myriad of different languages, etc. The point of using a powerful editor like Emacs and Vim is to streamline your work, all of it. It's a generic, customizable UI to automate everything that buzzes and moves in your machine. Writing code; interacting with various interpreters, compilers and debuggers; taking notes and TODO lists; etc.
The benefits of mastering your tools are economical and felt in your pocket and productivity. Every minute you spend waiting for an IDE to move its fat hind around to get something done, is a minute lost from your working day. If your aim is to be productive, and not just "replaceable", then there is no need to shackle yourself with a lowest common denominator environment.
You don't spend 100% of your time writing code in one language or tech stack, in an IDE; there are hours spent researching and taking notes, writing documentation, coding in a myriad of different languages, etc. The point of using a powerful editor like Emacs and Vim is to streamline your work, all of it. It's a generic, customizable UI to automate everything that buzzes and moves in your machine. Writing code; interacting with various interpreters, compilers and debuggers; taking notes and TODO lists; etc.