It depends on the stack you are working with. Need to work with a big, unfamiliar, badly documented API? Good programmers don't want to be in that kind of situation, but it happens.
For me, cscope+vim+ddd has all the editing/building/debugging power I need .. I think with this combination of tools I can match the prowess of any fat IDE for any degree of 'cruddy project' > 'power codebase' ..