Yes, that’s true. It was definitely not my intent to imply that such people are not professionals. They do seem to be a very small part of the overall software developer world. To me it seems like 90% of devs are doing full stack UI, API, DB type stuff. But it probably seems the other way to people doing the other things.

Oh yes, I definitely agree with this. If you NEED an IDE that’s certainly not a good sign no matter what you’re working in. Although I can see in certain codebases with huge amounts of macros, functions, weird or inconsistent syntax, that an IDE might be basically necessary to be productive. But for sure agreed that I could do my job just via a text editor if I had to. Sure wouldn’t enjoy it though 😅

I admit I haven’t known any Unix hackers! I guess my type of work had me assuming they would still prefer an IDE. What is it about this kind of development that makes you prefer text editors, if you don’t mind my asking?

Still super cool to hear about your workflow. Makes me wish I had an excuse to spend time experimenting with that stuff.

Everyone has given many good and enlightening responses but picking yours to put the majority of my thoughts in. Yes, for sure I can see there being more specialized disciplines that don’t make much use of IDE’s. I shouldn’t have made the same mistake as the meme! Not to sound like an LLM but “you’re absolutely right!” lol. I certainly have my niche and I can see people spending their whole career in a niche where IDEs are superfluous. I like your balanced take on it.

The Minecraft world editor? They use that for developing non-Minecraft world software? That’s pretty fascinating. What sort of things do they develop with it?

Hey, I was explicitly being open to being wrong and acknowledging that I may simply not have encountered those kinds of professionals. I don’t even think I was being hostile, only saying that from my perspective the idea of this meme is a misunderstanding propagated by people with less experience.

But rather than present any evidence, even anecdotal, taking it personally (even as a joke) serves only to publicly make me look more correct 🤷

I have never seen or known a serious professional who preferred to work outside of a full featured IDE. All the most skilled and highest paid developers I’ve ever known were more adamant about using the IDE when compared to the less skilled developers who preferred to do things more via command line and text editors. Just my experience. I often suspect that this meme is shared and liked by people who aren’t really professionals. Perhaps I just haven’t encountered them yet.

Edit: It seems I indeed haven’t encountered them! Although I do stand by my original point to the extent that it seems there are disciplines where IDEs are best and disciplines where they aren’t. I enjoyed reading everyone’s responses and thinking about areas of software that I don’t usually think about. It’s given me lots to look into. Thanks everyone who responded nicely! Also, I definitely did not mean to imply that specialists working without IDEs are amateurs or anything like that! Much respect to everyone out there making software.