Through my own experience moving from IDE & higher-level languages to a simple textual editor and (nullable) systems languages, I've noticed that the way I read and write code is entirely different, and I can remember my "old eye." I think most people reading this view your "noise" as their signal. They get a good feeling when resolving tooling diagnostics (doubled if in an unfamiliar-to-them domain like systems programming.) It makes them feel secure. In that sense, I agree very much with the article: "I honestly think a lot of this discussion is fundamentally a misunderstanding of different perspectives rather than anything technical."

Personally, I've noticed that I pause less and write more now that I've got less tooling in my editor, and that's very enjoyable. I'd encourage anyone to try it. I have no autocomplete or "hover" info, just compilation errors presented aside the offending lines.