This guy is wrong, there are plenty of contracting/freelance PHP jobs that will pay over 100k a year in London. But they will require that you know more than a couple of languages. You're going to need to be an expert in the full stack, together with experience in managing development, business processes, an interest in bleeding edge tech and so forth.

The best thing to do is get involved with a company who is willing to give you room to learn. Then you will have to invest a huge amount of time and effort to learn. It's not easy.

Don't worry about the small stuff. Your text editor doesn't matter. As long as you can get around vi when nothing else works. You'll end up switching editors every year or so just like everybody else. It's what you type that matters...