Honest question: Have you ever witnessed an emacs or vi master at work? Have you ever had the experience of watching one of those guys push some keys on the keyboard and then ask yourself how the bloody hell they just did that complicated manipulation in two seconds, when it would have taken you 45? That stuff adds up, more than linearly because they'll do things you wouldn't even consider due to effort. (You won't even consciously decide not to do them, you won't even consider them as a possible option.)
(The other day somebody linked a site that extracts the top 100 comments for any HN user. Somebody else started creating links to all the users on the leaderboard. I happened to catch them halfway through linkifying the people on the user board. You never would have caught me halfway through such a task, because I would have used an emacs macro to linkify one, then repeat it 99 times as quickly as I please. And I'm not very good with emacs. Many other tools can do this too, of course.)
Be sure you actually know what tool mastery looks like before you downplay the importance of tool mastery. Sure, what matters is results, but tools profoundly and inescapably influence the results you get, so while "all that matters is results" is a true statement on the surface, the actual claim being made underneath about the irrelevance of tools is deeply, deeply false.
(The other day somebody linked a site that extracts the top 100 comments for any HN user. Somebody else started creating links to all the users on the leaderboard. I happened to catch them halfway through linkifying the people on the user board. You never would have caught me halfway through such a task, because I would have used an emacs macro to linkify one, then repeat it 99 times as quickly as I please. And I'm not very good with emacs. Many other tools can do this too, of course.)
Be sure you actually know what tool mastery looks like before you downplay the importance of tool mastery. Sure, what matters is results, but tools profoundly and inescapably influence the results you get, so while "all that matters is results" is a true statement on the surface, the actual claim being made underneath about the irrelevance of tools is deeply, deeply false.