Walk into any tech company's engineering floor, and you'll notice something curious: the developers with 15+ years of experience often run the same editors their junior colleagues dismiss as "outdated." Vim. Emacs. Sublime Text. Sometimes just bare-bones nano.
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Meanwhile, junior developers run VS Code with 47 extensions, IntelliJ with every plugin imaginable, and wonder why their laptop sounds like a jet engine during code review.
There's something going on here. And it's not stubbornness or nostalgia—it's strategy.
đź“Š Survey Data
According to the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, while VS Code dominates overall usage (73%), Vim/Neovim usage actually increases with experience level. Among developers with 10+ years of experience, Vim usage is nearly double that of junior developers.
The Cognitive Load Economy
Senior developers have learned something through hard experience: attention is a finite resource.
Every feature in your IDE that you're not currently using is a potential distraction. Every pop-up, suggestion, and sidebar is competing for the same mental bandwidth you need for solving actual problems.
The IDE Paradox
Modern IDEs are engineering marvels. They can:
- Autocomplete entire functions
- Refactor across thousands of files
- Debug complex distributed systems
- Integrate with every tool in your stack
But here's the trade-off: they also consume enormous system resources, present overwhelming interfaces, and constantly interrupt your flow with "helpful" suggestions.
đź’ˇ The Vim Philosophy
"Vim doesn't do things for you. It multiplies your abilities." This is the core insight. Plain text editors don't reduce your capability—they reduce interference with your capability.
What Senior Developers Actually Need
After a decade of coding, most developers realize they use about 5% of their IDE's features 95% of the time:
- Open files
- Edit text
- Search and replace
- Navigate to definitions
- Run commands
Every other feature—the integrated Git GUI, the database browser, the Docker manager, the Kubernetes dashboard—these are things that could be separate tools. Often, should be separate tools.
The Unix Philosophy in Action
Do one thing well. Compose simple tools into complex workflows. This isn't new wisdom—it's the founding principle of Unix, still relevant 50+ years later.
A senior developer might use:
- Vim for editing
- tmux for terminal management
- git on the command line
- ripgrep for searching
- make or scripts for building
Each tool does one thing. Together, they form a system that's faster, more customizable, and more reliable than any monolithic IDE.
The Speed Advantage
Plain text editors start instantly. Not "fast"—instantly.
- Vim startup: ~50ms
- VS Code startup: ~3-5 seconds
- IntelliJ startup: ~10-30 seconds
When you're making quick edits to config files, reviewing logs, or fixing typos, waiting 10 seconds to open an editor feels absurd.
✨ The Speed Math
If you open your editor 50 times per day and save 10 seconds each time, that's over 8 minutes daily—or about 35 hours per year. Senior developers have done this math, whether consciously or not.
Modal Editing: The Hidden Superpower
Vim and Emacs use modal editing—different modes for different actions. In Vim:
- Normal mode: Navigation and commands
- Insert mode: Typing text
- Visual mode: Selecting text
This seems awkward at first. But once mastered, it means your fingers never leave the home row. No reaching for mice. No chord-heavy shortcuts. Just efficient, fluid editing.
The Learning Curve Myth
Yes, Vim has a steep learning curve. But "steep" doesn't mean "infinite." Most developers become proficient within a few weeks of dedicated use. After that, they're faster than they ever were with graphical editors.
The mistake junior developers make is measuring the learning curve in days rather than career years. A few weeks of discomfort for decades of efficiency is an easy trade.
When IDEs Make Sense
To be fair, there are genuine use cases for full IDEs:
Large-Scale Refactoring
When you need to rename a method across 500 files and update every call site, IDE refactoring tools are genuinely useful.
Unfamiliar Codebases
When exploring a new codebase with millions of lines, "go to definition" and "find all references" features help you navigate the unknown.
Strongly-Typed Languages with Complex Generics
Languages like Java, C#, or TypeScript with heavy generic usage benefit from real-time type checking and code completion.
Learning New Languages
When you don't know the standard library, autocomplete is genuinely helpful rather than distracting.
⚠️ The Key Insight
Senior developers don't reject IDEs dogmatically. They use the right tool for the task. Sometimes that's IntelliJ. Often, it's Vim. The difference is they choose consciously rather than defaulting to "whatever everyone else uses."
The Focus Factor
There's a psychological element too. Plain text editors are quiet. They don't pop up notifications, suggest extensions, or highlight your dependencies as "vulnerable."
This quietness creates space for deep work—the focused, uninterrupted thinking that produces high-quality code.
The Minimalism Effect
Just as some people find they think better in clean, empty rooms, many developers find they code better in clean, empty editors. The interface becomes invisible. Only the code remains.
Building Your Own Environment
Senior developers often have highly customized configurations built over years:
- Custom keybindings trained into muscle memory
- Personalized color schemes for visual comfort
- Scripts for common workflows
- Plugins that add exactly what's needed, nothing more
This environment becomes an extension of their thinking. Changing editors feels like losing a limb.
The Practical Path
If you're curious about plain text editors, here's a practical approach:
Start Small
Use Vim for editing config files and commit messages. Small, low-stakes contexts where speed matters.
Learn the Basics
Navigation (hjkl), insert mode (i), save and quit (:wq), delete line (dd), undo (u). That's enough to be functional.
Add Features Slowly
Learn one new command per week. Let it become muscle memory before adding more.
Don't Force It
If you're on a deadline, use whatever tool gets the job done. Skill-building is for normal times.
Tools for Quick Formatting
One area where plain text editors can feel limiting is code formatting. That's where browser-based tools help:
- JS Beautifier — Format JavaScript instantly without editor plugins
- CSS Beautifier — Clean up stylesheets
- JSON Formatter — Format JSON for readability
- XML Formatter — Structure XML data
These tools let you format code quickly without installing anything—perfect for the minimalist workflow.
Conclusion: It's About Choice
The senior developers using plain text editors aren't being contrarian. They're not stuck in the past. They've simply done the cost-benefit analysis and found that for their work, simpler is better.
The real lesson isn't "use Vim." The lesson is: question your defaults. The most popular tool isn't automatically the best tool for you. The most feature-rich option isn't automatically the most productive.
Try different approaches. Measure your actual productivity. Make conscious choices about your tools.
Maybe you'll end up loving VS Code forever. Maybe you'll discover the quiet focus of a plain terminal. Either way, you'll have chosen rather than defaulted.
🔧 Try This Week
Challenge: Edit your next config file or shell script in Vim (or nano if Vim feels intimidating). Just the basics: open, edit, save. See if the speed and simplicity appeals to you. And when you need to format code, use our browser-based formatters—no plugins required.
