I disagree in three ways!

First, hardcore programmers always know at least one text-based editor well, but some of us specialize in emacs.

Oh, I can use the vi family, slowly, but I am very fast at emacs, and it has a ton of features that I miss in the vi family (many or all of which can be installed as extensions, of course).

But in the last twenty years, I haven't been on a machine where I couldn't install emacs in seconds, so I haven't had to do that in a long time. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had to use vi!

I love IDEs but for solo projects in particular, I use emacs because I never ever have to use the mouse.

Second, there are a ton of fine front-end programmers who don't know vi or emacs. Some of them are very productive.

The third is a quibble: it's vi that people are mastering. vi is certain to be on any machine. vim is the most popular improvement on vi.

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Overall, I tell every young programmer that they should master one text-based editor that can be used over an ssh connection, whether vi or emacs.

Your advice is good - you just need to branch out a little and include the King of Editors. :-D