> If it was simple, there'd be an answer to this question: how do I setup Vim/Emacs as a fully feature complete IDE for C, C++, Rust, Go, Java, JavaScript (Node or Web), C#?

That's the promise of Spacemacs:

- clone their git repository into your .emacs.d directory

- run emacs once, answer three basic questions about your preferences

- add your list of languages to the "dotspacemacs-configuration-layers" list in your .spacemacs

  - I even looked up the syntax for you: "c-c++ rust go java javascript csharp"

- make it reload the config

You're done. All this should take less time than it took me to look up those "layer" names in the docs.

> By feature complete I mean autocomplete, error detection, built in one-button-runs, automatic config/sane defaults.

Yes, all that is the promise of Spacemacs.

If anything, I found it to be too much of a kitchen sink (it tries too hard to be "smart" about balancing parentheses for me etc.). Still, you might want to give it a whirl if you have 15 minutes. I ended up going back to vim for almost everything, and I'm on the line on whether to use Proof General from plain Emacs or from Spacemacs. But the time to check it out is not wasted.

fwiw, the advice in https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/6144#issuecomme... disabled the annoying smartparens behavior

I didn't know Spacemacs would automatically build and run things in one click.

How do you create a project in spacemacs? Is there a simple text-based UI for it?

that question doesn't even make sense. What is a "project"? My Rails project is going to look radically different than someone's Go project, than a Rust project, than an iOS / Swift project....

if you're talking "project" in the Atom / Sublime / Eclipse sense of the word then a "project" is just a folder. If that's what you mean by "project" then yes, you can create folders in a text-based ui, and you've been able to do so since the dawn of unix, and basically every editor out there has an easy way to either create a folder with some clicks or enable direct access to the underlying shell to create one.

If the idea of project creation isn't standardized in UI presentation then it isn't an IDE.

You can run make with one click. If by "create a project" you mean, you want a GUI that writes Makefiles for you... that might not be included.

Personally I'm thrilled by the fragmentation in this space -- I've been using Vim since 4.x, and vi before that. I've never found the plugins particularly enticing; every time I try using things that are outside the core distribution, they end up taking more time to maintain than they're worth. Since I mainly stick with the core distribution, Vim has felt pretty stagnant since it got code folding and syntax highlighting, more than 15 years ago. I've been trying alternatives -- spacemacs feels bloated, neovim is still carrying a lot of baggage (e.g. support for vimscript). So far Kakoune is the one I'm most excited about, to the point where I am right now updating my neglected Cygwin installation so I can try to build it for Windows. (Kakoune needs unix-style select, so native Windows builds are unlikely.)

> By feature complete I mean autocomplete, error detection, built in one-button-runs, automatic config/sane defaults.

By and large, I find features like these distracting to the point of unusability, which is why I like living in stripped-down editor land. Different strokes for different folks.

I think the difference here is you want a text editor and I want an IDE in a terminal.

Exactly, and I don't think vim is a good platform to build an IDE on, despite a long history of people trying. I'm not an emacs guy, so I'm not speaking from experience here, but my impression of emacs is that it's already an IDE in the terminal. It's got a bit of a reputation for being a massive pile of elisp hacks, so maybe guile-emacs is the future there?

There is a learning curve, but at least with MELPA setting up Emacs is pretty easy. Company is a good autocomplete backend, Irony is a good back end for C/C++, and Company-Go and Emacs-Racer will do you for Go and Rust. Each of these can be installed by using interactive commands (M-x package-install), and configured with a few lines in your init.el (almost entirely just copying and pasting from the Github front page of the respective package).

I like the fragmentation, because different people have different needs. E.g. I prefer a much more minimalistic setup than my colleagues who use IDEs like Eclipse. I've never been able to comfortably use an IDE. And not a single vim config I found on the internet was right for me.

That said, I think many would agree that for C/C++ YouCompleteMe is a must-have. It has ctags functionality (but without false positives), error detection, autocomplete... And probably lots of other features I'm ignorant of.

There is a semi-official vim plugin for go. I used to use it when I was playing with this language. Same for Rust. I don't know about other languages you've mentioned.

As for the "distributions". I prefer to configure everything myself, but I get it that others might want everything preconfigured for them.

PS. Yes, I'd agree that vim has insane defaults. All vim config files I saw have a common part, I think.

This is generally what roadblocks me when I try to pick up vim. The part I hate about atom is reaching for my mouse. But I like that I didn't have to sacrifice my firstborn to get a sane setup for three langauege simultaneously.

I was in a similar boat. The reality for vim is; generally, the syntax checkers and code completion plugins are hacks, honestly, go read the source code. When I did I was aghast that people were using and promoting them (specifically the java plugins). It's been a couple of years so take this with a grain of salt, imho etc.

I think if one really want's to pick up vim (or emacs) you have to set aside the IDE part of your brain. For example, I still use an ide for java, but I use vanilla vim with no plugins for frontend (html, css, javascript, ember cli). There it's a text editor and that's all I need. Plain vim actually has A LOT of functionality. If one learns the vim way, they might find they don't need nearly as many plugins.

I've always suspected that the fastest way to learn vim is to install the default and not copy someone else's ~/.vimrc at first. Edit it whenever you need some specific functionality, and edit often. Also read the :help docs a lot.

But I admit it would be nice if the vim project shipped a sane default setup that was aimed at the average programmer.

Late edit to the above: I was wrong and outdated about defaults. Someone just reminded me that Vim 8 now comes with better default config.

I've been using ~5 IDEs for the better part of two years now. I tried to hold my leaning-tower of Eclipse together but that didn't end well. I love Eclipse because it has all of the features I need that many other IDEs don't have yet but at the same time it has one of the worst and least intuative plugin systems (funny how that works out, right?). There's no hope for polyglots I think because nothing will ever be developed for us. Companies are usually Java, Scala, Python, JS shops and there isn't much a need for mutli-language tooling but sadly that's what most of what I need.

IntelliJ is awesome for polyglot development.

JetBrains many IDEs*

IntellJ becomes a hob-cobbled mess of half complete plugins if you attempt to push everything into that single beast of an IDE.

I currently use CLion, PyCharm, PHPStorm, Project Rider and a few other JetBrains IDEs but sadly their autocompletion and features aren't on-par with Eclipse's autocomletion and integration into Java. Nothing really comes close to that in my opinion.