[SeanDav]

I have been so spoiled. I have never been much of a Microsoft fan (except for Excel, best software ever) but have done most of my development in C, C++, C# using Microsoft IDE's which as everyone knows are pretty much the dogs bollocks. I do Java development using Eclipse.

Always wanted to know what to use as a general purpose IDE that is ideally cross platform and was looking for opinions on whether these VIM layouts might be suitable?

[sea6ear]

Honestly, for an IDE replacement rather than just an editor, I'd suggest Emacs rather than Vim.

Reasons:

* Emacs plays well with other programs, you can start other shells, language interpreters etc, from within Emacs and interact with them easily. There are some Vim plugins that try to enable this but I've always found them less satisfying.

* Emacs is usable in all the same scenarios as Vim (i.e. cross-platform, over ssh, dual GUI/Terminal ability, screen/tmux/dvtm compatible etc)

Random Thoughts:

Vim is an amazing editor but I've always found that these attempts to add features to make it into an IDE cause it to start to feel clunky.

Emacs on the other hand, plugins generally work well (except when they don't).

Vim (or at least vi) is installed on basically every Unix install (and available for install everywhere). Emacs is installable everywhere also but setup generally takes a bit longer.

If you are going to use Emacs and you are intrigued by Vim style keybindings, I've found Emacs Evil-mode to be one of the best Vim emulation packages that I've tried (most Vim emulation packages will eventually cause frustration - Evil mostly doesn't).

I find that I use Vim more when I'm switching between a lot of different computers, and Emacs when I'm mostly developing on one stable computer setup.

So my workflow in a particular environment is usually, first install Vim so I can get work done, and as I use the environment more I'll end up installing Emacs and gradually switching over to it.

[wildanimal]

But if you look at Emacs-as-IDE route taken by EDE/CEDET suite, it's a kludgy beast... (I don't know how large the EDE/CEDET user community is, but most people I know forsake it in favor of the simpler facilities in Emacs).

[mkmkmmmmm]

I've found vim is the finest code editor I've ever used, but it's a crap IDE in terms of organizing a project, compiling, and debugging all from one software. Disclaimer A: I haven't spent a ton of time trying to make it an IDE, and B: I have the misfortune ;) of being an iPhone dev, and only Xcode plays nice with the devices and simulator.

If anyone can prove me wrong, please, please, please do so, because vim is just awesome for editing code.

[terhechte]

Not entirely true. Appcode, an alternative IDE, also works fine with development on devices and the simulator. I haven't heard of an open source plugin to do this yet, though. So no way to do that for vim. (There's a vim plugin for app code though, it's not perfect but ok).

[mkmkmmmmm]

Ah; I tried Appcode and hated it too much to get to debugging, but it is nice that someone's figured out how to interoperate.