The boring answer is that there is no particular nerd-rage directed against IDEs. There are many nerds who prefer IDEs and there are many nerds who prefer text

The boring answer is that there is no particular nerd-rage directed against IDEs. There are many nerds who prefer IDEs and there are many nerds who prefer text editors. The modern culture encourages us to self-identify as rebels breaking away from uniformity. Thus your attention focuses on people putting down IDEs, while a vim user's attention focuses on people putting down text editors. I don't use IDEs, because I find myself somewhat less productive in them. Syntax coloring, to me, is a fantastic feature, and I use it in a text editor. Integration with source control and usage searches are things I like to do in a separate window, because I want them to be deliberate enough - I think they'd break my concentration more easily if I didn't have to context-switch to do them. I dislike autocomplete for a similar reason - it creates the impression of my thought moving in tiny jerks all the time - even if it isn't really true, the impression itself is a nuisance. I don't think that the typing speed gains from autocomplete could really matter to me. The time spent actually typing lines of source code is a very small portion of my most productive days. All of these things are not true for some programmers I know who feel at home in IDEs, some of them my betters.