He does have a point. Using vi derivatives does seem a tad spartan today, and I've personally never been a fan of vi, nor of emacs, but much of the community has this pseudo-elitist dichotomy set up around those two editor families.

I'm not really a fan of what passes as IDEs, either, but I generally am not attached to any particular editor and hop around them.

(The right answer to vi vs. emacs is, of course, Acme.)