Software developers don't ever work in text editors, instead they use IDEs (integrated development environments) full of code assistance tools, etc.
Why don't writers use similarly advanced writing environments full of writing assistance tools, text analysis, and functions for improving their productivity? Is that because there is no actual need for that or is it a product opportunity here?
Full disclosure:
I'm a software developer looking for opportunities across different fields and I also tried to write a book several times in the past. I always ended up realizing that I'm not good at writing, though it would be great if I could provide some value to good writers (unlike me) and help them be more productive.
Answer
IDE-like tools exist for writers. Scrivener is a powerful general-purpose tool (also with questions here). Madcap Flare, aimed at technical writers, has good support for updating links, defining "snippets" (xinclude blocks, essentially), variables, conditionalization, advanced build options, and more. Arbortext Epic is another tool in that vein. There are XML editors like Oxygen and Notepad++ that you are probably already familiar with as a programmer. That's just a sampling.
Many writers prefer to just write and find that too much tooling gets in the way. Some of them use tools for planning separate from writing. Maybe fiction doesn't need to be refactored as often as code (though it does need to be refactored sometimes, and doing that in an editor using search is a pain). There are a lot of different kinds of writing and writers, and generalizations like "writers don't (or do) X" don't always stand up to scrutiny. Some do, some don't, some would if they didn't cost so much, and some do sometimes, depending on the task at hand.
(Psst. Some software developers still use emacs or vim...)
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