Call it a back-to-basics movement or simply professionals
seeking the best tools to get the job done well and on time. With
enterprises putting a premium on productivity, a quiet revolution
among programmers is eschewing the heavy, feature-filled IDE and
turning instead to the venerable standby: the code editor.
"The spark behind this growing trend comes down to
control--enterprises tout IDEs as the development tool du jour,
with supporters arguing that programmers will get more done if they
can do all their work inside a single environment. But many
programmers (especially experienced ones) prefer a markedly
different approach, using code editors and pluggable modules,
modes, or other extendibility features to pick and choose just the
tools they need. They don't enjoy being shoved into a single
development environment, and contend that IDEs are
resource-intensive, slow, and have many more features than are
really needed to get the job done..."