Some of the most skilled programmers I've worked with don't care much about tools. And this was ~20 years ago -- it doesn't have anything to do with "lower bar

Some of the most skilled programmers I've worked with don't care much about tools. And this was ~20 years ago -- it doesn't have anything to do with "lower barriers to entry". They just get the job done. They definitely are not futzing around with changing terminals and color schemes In certain domains you have to use the tools you're given, e.g. programming game consoles (at least 20 years ago), embedded systems, nVidia chips, etc. Or just moving to a new company where they do things a different way I'm definitely more on the "cares about tools" side, but I recognize that it's an anti-pattern when you spend too much time on that. Sometimes it's more efficient to adapt yourself to the problem being solved