I agree 1000% - very good point. The best tools (for you) are the ones that solve the problems that bug you the most and feel the most "right". It's a personal thing.

For example: In my case, I used to write a lot of plain HTML. I found it got annoying to type brackets and keep track of all the closing tags. So I tried ZenCoding, and it helped, but only on creation, not on editing. I finally settled on haml, because to me (not everyone), it solves the exact problem that I found troublesome and gave me the results that I like. No closing tags, cleaner markup. Others may disagree, but that doesn't matter - I like it for my purposes, and that's all it takes.

So to your point - learn the underlying tech, find your personal pain points, and use the tools that best solve them for you.