Just Two More Plugins

The text editor hierarchy is real and it's brutal . At the top, Vim/Emacs users look down on everyone with their terminal superiority complex. In the middle, VSCode/Spyder folks think they've found the perfect balance between power and sanity. And then there's the poor soul using whatever text editor came pre-installed with Ubuntu, probably Gedit or Nano, just trying to survive while everyone else judges their life choices. The coding elite have created their own caste system, and your editor choice reveals exactly where you belong in the programming social hierarchy. The deeper you go into customizing your .vimrc file, the more insufferable you become to everyone around you.

When your production server is infected with malware and the only way to communicate with the outside world is through Vim commands! That hazmat suit isn't protecting them from a virus - it's protecting them from the absolute horror of not being able to exit Vim. The desperate "ESC :q!" is the universal distress signal of developers trapped in the terminal abyss. Some say they're still trying to save and quit to this day...

The bell curve of IDE preferences shows the full spectrum of developer evolution. On the left, junior devs with barely enough experience to compile "Hello World" happily use free text editors. In the middle, the financially masochistic mid-level devs shell out hundreds for JetBrains subscriptions and swear their productivity justifies it. Meanwhile, on the right, battle-hardened senior devs who've seen IDEs come and go have circled back to Vim or some obscure terminal-based editor they've used since the Clinton administration. The truly enlightened know that paying for an IDE is just Stockholm syndrome with syntax highlighting.

Ah yes, the ancient stone tablet IDE. Because nothing says "I'm a serious developer" like carving your collision detection algorithms into limestone. Modern IDEs with their "syntax highlighting" and "error detection" are clearly for the weak. Real programmers chisel their bugs directly into rock so they're permanent, just like their technical debt.

The eternal editor war continues, but now with Olympic precision! On the left, we have the high-tech sniper with all the bells and whistles—VS Code armed with AI copilot and enough extensions to crash your RAM. Perfect form, specialized gear, probably takes 30 seconds just to load. Meanwhile on the right, there's our Notepad++ champion—slightly disheveled, glasses askew, but still somehow getting the job done with what's essentially a text file and a prayer. The coding equivalent of bringing a pistol to an artillery fight. And then there's me with Nano, watching from the audience with a slingshot and a rock. At least I can exit the editor without Googling how.

Ah yes, the classic "just use confidence" advice that falls apart when facing Vim. The top panel shows VS Code, React, and Node.js giving that smooth reassurance like they're the cool kids at school. Meanwhile, the bottom panel reveals the horrifying reality of a developer trying to exit Vim for the first time. No amount of confidence prepares you for that moment when you realize :q! might as well be ancient hieroglyphics. The "Are you sure?" is just Vim's way of saying "You sweet summer child, you have no power here."