As someone who have only used Emacs and Vim in the past 10 years, I wish you are right. But according to my observation, 90% of those 38% of developers only use Vim in when they are sshing to the server to update few config files or make simple edits to the scripts. When they do proper programming (like hundreds lines of coding in a project), they switch to other IDEs like VSCode. So yes I personally still consider Vim and Emacs “niche” editors.
Yeah, even if that is true, what part of a tool used by close to 40% of developers is niche?
niche /niːʃ,nɪtʃ/ (adjective) denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.
It's niche /for development work/. Being used by a developer doesn't make it used for development. Or the most used developing tool would be the toilet.
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It's not. I use vim on a daily basis, but all I do with it is writing commit messages. The rest I do with an IDE or different editor. I'm surely not alone with that.
Even I switch to VSCodium when I write Go, for example, because the Go extension is just so good. I use it for medium- and large-sized projects, when I have to navigate through multiple files. There are ways to do it in Vim (I configured it), and Emacs, but sometimes it really is just easier to click since I am already using the mouse for stuff. There are people who never use their mouse, in which case I can imagine they use Emacs or Vim only.
And writing commit messages are to development in the same class as using the restroom?
Judging by the quality of most commit messages - yes.
> Yeah, because I use vim to turn on the shower.
You say that as if it's ridiculous. Isn't there an M-x shower-on command somewhere in Emacs?
While not going to argue that vim is niche, I don’t think it is. StackExchange surveys are likely highly unrepresentative and lack external validity. I do not believe 40% of developers use vim based on such an unvalidated and likely biased study.
In rhr group if hundred plus programmers I work with, id estimate less than 5 percent use anything but emacs and vim.
The other tooling feels niche to me.
Worth noting that a lot of people use those IDEs with vim keys