Ok, but you listed a tool outside of the editor (grep). In this game, you dont get access to tools outside of the editor except a very limited "test" command.

You are 100% correct that it is possible to write code with only a plain text editor. It's how I got started. Pico + man pages (vi didn't make sense and I couldn't exit it anyway so avoided it for a while), but even with "just a plain text editor" I still had access to other tools like a compiler and its output, etc,m but we're not talking about programming on a normal system here. It's a game inside which you type code as part of playing the game.

If you look up screen shots for the game, you'll see what looks like a shell, but it only has a very small number of commands, so you don't have the tools you would normally have outside of the text editor (like grep). Can you search multiple files in the game? Yes, switch the editor between each file one by one (it has tabs) and search. Would a better in game editor improve that experience? I'd say yes. On a normal system you could get around edutor linitations by using tools outside the editor like grep. This isn't a normal system. It's a fake computer inside of a game and you don't get the typical tools outside of the in game code editor.

There may be some tricks that a JS developer would know to use inside the game, but I'm not a JS developer. That also means i need to look up JS standard functions and syntax outside of the game. Having it in game would be a better experience for me but not a requirement. I got pretty far in the game. I'll probably go back to it as newer ADHD obsessions allow.