It's like shells or editors. Many `older` beards are mindful of the aspect that not all tools are equal in that most systems had some tools shipped as default

It's like shells or editors. Many `older` beards are mindful of the aspect that not all tools are equal in that most systems had some tools shipped as default and others you had to go and install yourself. Thus they became wise though experience of sticking to using tools that did the job and would be more commonly available. Hence they all grew up with the likes of vi,sh and awk. They did the job and worked well. Yes alternatives became more acesable and now most systems ship with all the flavour of shell and editor as they class the likes of bash,ksh,csh... and emac/perl to be part of those essential common installs. This and space/storage less of a factor as it was decades ago. Really gets down to personal taste now more than it did in the past, but if a tool works, does the job and the alternatives don't offer any gains, then they stick with that. Not saying the alternatives are bad or worse in any way, or indeed better, they are just different and in some cases, maybe better. At least the core reason of them always being there instead of having to add another dependency and risk factor to a system have become moot these days. TL;DR some older tools more guaranteed to be upon all systems as a lowest common denominator in the older days than now and legacy always outlives the machine, hence we still run COBOL today as it works, maybe better solutions but rebuilding rome overnight still avoided.