I suspect the rationale is that, depending on the language you're using, some IDEs "help" with coding to the point where they're correcting your mistakes and ev

I suspect the rationale is that, depending on the language you're using, some IDEs "help" with coding to the point where they're correcting your mistakes and even writing parts of your code for you. This is pretty much a selling point for everything JetBrains makes, and arguably even Visual Studio Code rubs against the edge of that if you're using a language that's well-supported by IntelliSense. The central thrust of the course is presumably how to write code yourself, and the case could be made that learning with an editor designed to routinely save you from yourself isn't going to be as good as an editor which, well, isn't. (This is setting aside the argument as to whether Vim is a "dated" editor. Vim is an old editor, to be sure, but forget WordPerfect -- it's not as old as Microsoft Word is!)