> I suspect it's primarily an identity signal: it's harder to feel like you're hacking The Matrix if your IDE looks like Word from a distance.
This is also my theory. My theory is that "hacker signals" like dark backgrounds, tricked-out shell config, and using vim are more common in language communities where people feel insecure about their claim to technical status - or rather, about the acceptance by others of their entirely legitimate claim - such as those of Ruby and JavaScript.
> using vim are more common in language communities where people feel insecure about their claim to technical status
What about us greybeards who just feel naked without vi/vim? I've ended up (due to market demand) in the frontend world, but I still use vim because I feel horribly unproductive plodding around with a mouse and arrow keys in Visual Studio or what have you. Yes, given a few weeks I could learn the shortcuts and be more productive, but I can't imagine I'd ever reach my vim level of productivity (same applies to emacs users as to vim users, I'm sure). So why put myself through that?
Just something to keep in mind. Many of us use vim because that's what we're used to. And to be fair to the younger developers, some of them see how productive vim users are in navigating a document and make the switch. Nothing to do with "signaling".
When I have a big edit I'll just pop open a vim window. I cut the text out of VS Code or whatever wretched web editor I have to use for some online App and paste it into the vim window, edit, then cut and paste back into the original window. When they come up with a variant of a pathetic markdown box that supports :%s//blah/g I might consider the internet ready for prime time.
The best thing about modern GUIs is they let me have a zillion command lines open at the same time.
it may just be my own circle, but comparing the Ruby folks I know from 10 years ago to the Ruby folks I know now... there's fewer of them, and those that remain using Ruby day to day never went in for those 'hacker signals'. But the Ruby folks I know from 10 years ago who've left and moved in to other arenas (like JavaScript) did throw use some of that sort of signaling.
This is also my theory. My theory is that "hacker signals" like dark backgrounds, tricked-out shell config, and using vim are more common in language communities where people feel insecure about their claim to technical status - or rather, about the acceptance by others of their entirely legitimate claim - such as those of Ruby and JavaScript.