I still deal with a line editor on a near daily basis working with some ancient piece of software. For editing records/data, it's very tolerable, and I wouldn't

I still deal with a line editor on a near daily basis working with some ancient piece of software. For editing records/data, it's very tolerable, and I wouldn't gain too much speed using a visual editor given the data format. For programming, laying it out on paper (or, more often these days, copy pasting the code from a visual editor after you're satisfied with it) is typical. After a while of using it, you kind of do get used to the limitations and work in the system, but I can't say how efficient I'd actually be making a non trivial program with just a line editor. For instance, creating and maintaining consistent indentation is just plain awful because you can't use tab and there is no auto spacing (well, in this particular instance. Unix ed and most other line editors wouldn't have this issue). I bet if I had to use it entirely with no visual editor to back me up, I'd end up being much more in tune to catching my mistakes though.