This article is a bit rambly so I'll just focus on some things from the beginning:

>If your kitchen knife kept changing shape, weight, and edge, you’d have to relearn it every time; that’s a hard tool to build trust in.

This concept was betrayed far before agentic tools, with a much earlier concept: Automatic updates.

To use one product as an example: When Windows ME and Windows Vista came out, people hated them even more than they usually hated Windows, so they did not use them. Microsoft was forced to respond by making a not-quite-as-bad OS in Windows XP and a pretty good OS in Windows 7 respectively. No longer is that an option, your workflow will simply be interrupted by automatic updates.

>Vim and Emacs, in their infinite customizability, can be molded to fit your exact hand and workflow

Vim is one major exception to the automatic update problem. I trust vim not just because it can do a ton of shit (although that is certainly nice), but because unlike most other software, its UI doesn't change unless I tell it to change. Aside from switching from vim to neovim (my decision, not a forced update), my muscle memory from a couple decades ago still works today.