Text editors edit text. Many many things that are important in life have little to do with computers. But the important things which involve computers are usu

Text editors edit text. Many many things that are important in life have little to do with computers. But the important things which involve computers are usually text based. You edit them with a text editor. IDEs, at their best, edit one family of languages. At their worst: Java. They do that very well, but general purpose text editors they are not.