[computerex]

Not useful to serious programmers? Do you feel the same way about Vim? Just because you haven't gotten used to using something, doesn't mean it's necessarily total shit. There is a reason why people have been using emacs for decades.

[ruleabidinguser]

I do actually, and I should reword that to "not useful for serious programming." VIM to me is best used for lightweight, quick and short editing tasks. THats how I use it. For any involved work, you're going to want a debugger, you're going to want automated build tools, you're going to want effortless compile/run cycles and so on..

You don't really want to implement all of that in VIM because your work won't be portable.

[scott_s]

I have all those. They're just not integrated into my editor. I use vim; it is my editor, but not my development environment. Unix is my development environment.

[ruleabidinguser]

I;ve tried that approach, and its cumbersome to remember all the different commands, flags, combinations etc. I might need for each different project and for each different task. IDEs simplify this process dramatically. Its akin to GUI v DOS in terms of usability benefits.

[scott_s]

That's fine. But myself and a lot of other people get a lot of "serious programming" done using the approach.

[ruleabidinguser]

I don't really understand what the benefit of it is.

[computerex]

For me, using vim+vimium for Chrome means that majority of the time my hands are on the keyboard. I barely ever use the mouse.

Have you seen a really seasoned vim user work? Purely from an efficiency point of view, vim/modal text editing is simply better than traditional text editors.

[computerex]

Sounds to me like you aren't familiar with Vim and the ecosystem. Plug-ins are your friends. Use a package manager like Vundle to easily install plug-ins. Not sure why you say vim isn't portable. I have my vimrc file on my github. Not only is vim available on all major platforms, it comes pre-installed on a bunch of systems. All I need is my vimrc file, Vundle and an Internet connection to customize any vim install to exactly how I want it.