I have a minor in computer science and a bachelors in graphic design, but work primarily as a programmer now. So yeah, I am trying to tell developers how to do their jobs. You’d be surprised how many developers don’t pay attention to the style of their code. Lift the hood on a few open source web apps and you’ll see what I mean.

Vim is okay for minor edits and has saved me a few times when I needed to edit files quickly. Most of the web apps we build are not complex enough to warrant viewports, placemarks, or folding. We do rely heavily on regular expressions, but i’m still convinced they are voodoo.

If your a designer thats trying to tell developers how to do their job really its not necessary. Nearly all developers care a great deal about the style of their code. Your not a developer if you haven’t been in an argument on whether to but the { on the next line or the same one.

In your first example you don’t indent the lines of code within the if { } else {} blocks. Practically every developers style guide for writing code ever says this is one of the key things to do.

Most developers have moved beyond using vi or emacs. In any case both of them can do all you suggest here and more things that you probably have never dreamed of like viewports, placemarks, folding and regular expressions. Emacs and vi make most “modern” editors look sparse. The lack of pretty buttons to point and click mean most people will never see these features and sadly never use them.

PS. I still use vi (well vim) its the best editor bar none and the years I have invested in learning it pay off every day.