It is not the fault of these tools. You can think of code as data, and programmers producing this data, just like many other professions are producing data, too

It is not the fault of these tools. You can think of code as data, and programmers producing this data, just like many other professions are producing data, too. Programmers often have a variety of far better tools to handle this data. I think the reason for this are of course the programmers dogfooding, but also the culture of life-long learning, which minimizes UI design to just API design. An intuitive GUI for a crowd less open to learning new things is so much harder to make. I nevertheless see this as a gift. It is your attitude with these tools, that makes you unhappy. I I often have this strange feeling of missing out on an even better technology, the cool kids might be using. I think the key here is to be confident with your choices of tools, improve them, when their is pain and identify when something is good enough for some time (measured in years) before you should reconsider again. In the end it is also about handling the tools. This sounds very reasonable but in practice it is often hard to overcome the urge to use the new shiny tool, which seems to make you a better programmer, when you define yourself as one. I don't think the extremist view of skipping them altogether and condemning the whole thing is the solution. I believe people, who feel they can't keep up in this imaginary race either search for ways to define themselves in another way e.g. in alternative careers (like you) or in their opposing way of programming (like the article author) throwing the others in a bottle of people, who do it wrong. There is a middle-ground between the Node developer and his weekly changing recursive package managers and the Coldfusion shop not doing scm.