ACME is a really cool editor and it's approach to the Unix philosophy is something I wish would have caught on in other TUIs/GUIs. That said, the real takeaway

ACME is a really cool editor and it's approach to the Unix philosophy is something I wish would have caught on in other TUIs/GUIs. That said, the real takeaway from ACME is you don't need an IDE to be a noteworthy programmer. In fact my list of noteworthy programmers (currently has a little over 100 devs on it), which includes Linux kernel devs, GNU devs, Bell Lab devs, programming language author devs, compiler devs, other people who wrote famous software, etc. contains 99% Vim/Emacs users. And no, it's not just people from an older generation, the list contains plenty of up and comers and even teenagers and college students who are already doing great things. Clearly more features, smarter IDEs, etc. isn't the deciding factor in doing great things. I think what ACME really teaches us is that by taking a less is more approach, we can train ourselves to understand code at a deeper level by paying more attention and taking our time, and giving us the creative freedom to compose code in any way we choose.