"We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist. " -- fcuk you. Really. Just an over generalization/stereotyping at

"We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist. " -- fcuk you. Really. Just an over generalization/stereotyping at its worst. I am a good hacker, and yes I use an IDE (eclipse to be exact). I have to code java for living (mobile), and I think I am one of the earliest developers in java, and i used to use Textpad, and Vim at my early days. I guess, in your eyes that makes me a "better developer", but the truth is that some IDEs really make your life easier. Much easier. In mobile you have to re-invent the wheel over and over again. From UI, to basic things as a string tokenizer, and it is impossible to memorize everything (some of your team memebers implement different functionalities). IDE's auto completions are very very useful. Also the refactoring facilities and debuging tools are really useful. I do use Vim for programming in LUA (does it make me cool?), and I really miss a lot of these tools. Simple things like variable highlighting, jump to definition are missing, and it makes the code a pain to read (especially if it s not yours). If you decide to change a variable name, good luck, you have to do string search/replace, and the potential for errors is huge. While a good programmer HAS to be comfortable and good in command line, just because they use an IDE doesn't make them less of a people. And the best programmers I have had the chance to work with used IDEs. These guys implemented a LUA VM in J2ME from scratch, in a couple of months. I have noticed that this really shallow and douchebag-y attitude comes from people that use mostly Ruby. It seems that in their eyes, if you don't use Ruby and textmate, you suck. But really, fcuk you.