I use JetBrains IDEs for most of my programming tasks, and it works great on my PC. GUI text editors are nice, but I often need to connect somewhere via SSH and write some scripts or edit config files on a remote host.
For a long time, nano was my tool of choice. It’s easy to use, but it has certain limitations. Luckily for me, nano was available pretty much everywhere I went, except for my old OpenWRT router. OpenWRT doesn’t have nano out of the box and supposed to use vi. This was the first time I really had to use it, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience, to say the least.
Time passed, and I started to get curious about vi and vim.
I mentioned UNIX for People a couple of months ago, and it was a fun read. It encouraged me to finally try vi. It’s tough at start, but, the longer I use it, the more exciting it gets.
Shells have the same effect. There are many front-loaded things in life, they require serious commitment, and they take a long time to pay off. We’re encouraged to take shortcuts and prioritize quick solutions over learning how to do things in the most productive way. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have Stack Overflow.