Funnily, my approach is somehow opposite. I run Emacs with all bells and whistles to write whatever language. With LSPs, you are now not married to a language-specific IDE. As a developer, I just start Emacs in server mode and never shut it down.
Then I use emacsclient to edit all kinds of files. It loads instantly, handles any reasonable files, can access remote files when needed, and has all the tools I want handy.
OTOH the IDE features do not clutter anything: I have no tabs, no toolbars, no file trees — not until I ask for them.
It looks like the comment is posted to a wrong thread.
(FTR, the setup above is used for practical, mostly commercial programming; I've left academia without even finishing my post-grad study, decades ago.)
I don’t believe they were referencing anything about literal higher education. In this context, saying something is an “academic exercise” is just a way of saying it’s being done more for one’s own edification, rather than any purely practical purposes.
Then I use emacsclient to edit all kinds of files. It loads instantly, handles any reasonable files, can access remote files when needed, and has all the tools I want handy.
OTOH the IDE features do not clutter anything: I have no tabs, no toolbars, no file trees — not until I ask for them.