Quote:
Originally Posted by greg nice
whats so great about vim? can you quantify it or is it just fanboyism?
Fair question. I haven't tried a new editor in years, for all i know other editors have caught up (NOTE: I've never used Emacs in anger, but i'm sure i'd be using that if I wasn't using vim.)
- Ubiquitous and free. It exists on every non-windows system I have to maintain by default. Usually exists on Windows systems 30 seconds after I log in too.
- Quick macro recording and repeat, basically recording your vim keystrokes and replaying them. qq is something I dont want to live without.
- Column editing. I dont think i've seen this feature in any other editor, and it is really useful a lot more often that you'd think once it is part of your editing arsenal.
- PCRE substitutions. I'm sure this exists everywhere now, but editing without regex matches sounds like pain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elcid
what kind of programmer uses just an editor?
I either use Microsoft Visual Studio or Eclipse. Both are very nice.
I come from a unix/Makefile background and never really grokked the intended workflow in IDEs, they seemed to be deliberately obscuring all of my common operations. One of these days i'll have to sit down with an IDE fan and figure out what all this new buzz is about