There is a segment of developers that came from the UNIX editors to IDE and we like and prefer the IDE. while I will agree that the editors are fast and configu

There is a segment of developers that came from the UNIX editors to IDE and we like and prefer the IDE. while I will agree that the editors are fast and configurable they don't totally outweigh the IDE. There is a lot of value in a good IDE and that is why they exist. The article talks about plugins and I would argue that that is a strong point of the IDE, I know some of the UNIX editors have pluggable architectures but a whole lot more effort is going into IDE plugins. For someone in a commercial software shop this can be a good thing, because workflow can be optimized without having to tinker with ones environment there are a lot of people working on workflow type issues in the IDE's and this efficiency is being passed on to others. The trick is finding a good IDE and everyone has their opinions, I personally like Netbeans as it has the workflow that I like and it supports all of the languages that I use. I really think there is some dogma in the anti-IDE arguments and I think it tries to unfairly biases people against good solutions. For some people the UNIX editors are right, for others IDE's are right, to call them dangerous is a little dubious in my opinion as it is rhetorical, the article makes some good arguments for using an editor, and I think it's defense should stand on those merits and not on building the perception that IDE's are a bad choice.