You are right that would be no friction at the start but I would argue there will be more friction later when he wants to build something more complex. Linux c

You are right that would be no friction at the start but I would argue there will be more friction later when he wants to build something more complex. Linux cli and vim and a tiling window manager have a learning curve (mostly remembering keyboard shortcuts) but they are actually far simpler tools with less distractions and more straight forward and robust tooling. I just taught a completely non technical 30 year old to build static html sites with the above setup. They appreciated the minimalism of having the screen split in half with code on one side and chrome on the other and no docks or menu bars to distract. They picked it up quickly.