[burntsushi]

I agree with regard to tabs, but I always felt like buffers were orthogonal to splits. I use both all of the time. Buffers to manage a working set of files and splits to manage the files that I want to viewable. I frequently find myself using splits to write new code while referencing other parts of the code base (or even the same file).

[terhechte]

Same here, I can quickly have all the functions, data, and docs visible, that I need for the particular code that I'm currently writing. Having to switch back and forth would only confuse me. Usually, the biggest problem I have with other IDEs is that they don't allow me to split as freely as vim / emacs do. XCode is shockingly stupid about it, for example.