Are you actually interested in having a conversation about why developers (like me) use vim? I've also been a programmer for almost 20 years. For me Vim+unix has outperformed VisualStudio (6-through current), Eclipse (and multiple derivatives), NetBeans, Xcode, and lots of smaller, language-specific IDEs.
> Are you actually interested in having a conversation about why developers (like me) use vim?
Sure! I'd love to hear your opinion. I will caution you: I've heard "it's just more productive" as a general statement so many times that if it's just that then I'm going to shrug and point you at my original post where I address that.
But if its something other than that - I love to hear it (even if I end up disagreeing).
I do note that you're comparing vim (a - feature rich - text editor) to massive, bloated, IDEs... I'm curious if you've tried other, often programming related, leaner text editors to compare? (ie, Sublime Text, VSCode, Notepad++, etc)
To summarize, for me most of the real work of programming happens in my head, and in my experience that's a much more powerful place to work when you train yourself to do it. In light of that, all the "features" of the IDE become bloat and distraction. What I need is a fast, responsive editor that doesn't get in my way.
> I do note that you're comparing vim (a - feature rich - text editor) to massive, bloated, IDEs... I'm curious if you've tried other, often programming related, leaner text editors to compare? (ie, Sublime Text, VSCode, Notepad++, etc)
Yes, exactly, and many of those are other good alternatives to Vim. Above is why I strongly prefer text editors to IDEs. I know Vim-style modal editing with basically a language of commands in and of itself is not a good match for everyone's mental model, but personally I'm at the point where I don't have to think when I'm manipulating text: it's all automatic, and extremely powerful. Moreso from a text-manipulation than any other editor I've used. That's why I'm with Vim specifically and why it's so productive for me. Vim+unix has become (over the years) the fastest way to author and manipulate large amounts of text: it's the quickest way for me to encode the model in my head in textual, language-oriented form.
> I doubt you'd be "outperforming" if you were writing Java in say Vim, over Eclipse/Intellij...which have vi-keybindings.
That's exactly what I'm doing.
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edit If you're actually interested in a discussion: what does your IDE actually give you in Java?
* Syntax highlighting? Every code editor (including Vim) gives you that, especially for such common languages as Java.
* JavaDoc access? Cool, but not worth the overhead. I've got the JavaDoc up in a browser pane on my second monitor, easy to search, doesn't make typing laggy or crap all over my text editing pane like the IDE does, and isn't triggered until I actually need the JavaDocs. I've found that by looking them up myself and not having autocomplete I actually internalize the documentation better, which means I need it less. My brain is much faster at autocomplete than the IDE too.
* Automated variable rename. Again, cool. This is one of the few net benefits. Doesn't out-weigh the rest. And silver surfer/grep + Vim gets me 95% of the way there. The only real trouble is when you have lots of duplicate names for un-related things, and that's a bad pattern I'm try to eliminate in my code anyway.
* Debugger? This is a powerful tool, to be sure. But it's not IDE-only. And I've seen it abused. I've never been anti-debugger, quite the contrary. I love my debugger. But I've noticed that as I've gotten older and have developed deeper experience I use it less and less. In fact, I don't think I even have a debugger installed on my work machine right now!
* Automated refactor/etc. I'm convinced this is the cause of bugs more often then the fix. Certainly for poor architectural decisions. I've elaborated in other comments, but basically: train your brain.
That last one I'll emphasize. I don't want the IDE doing any of my thinking for me. It doesn't think it applies canned patterns which may or may not be appropriate. Certainly it can be used well, but the more you use your brain to do it the better your brain will be. And if you train your brain it will be accustomed to doing the work so that the value lives in you, not your IDE. Now it's language-agnostic. Now you can jump onto the next cool language without being hobbled by the lack of IDE support. Now you are forced to learn the details of all the tools your IDE is wrapping for you and are more prepared to actually solve problems with, for example, your build environment.
Of course, I'm not saying that it's a binary your brain vs the IDE thing, but personally I find it more productive to live outside the IDE all the time.
No. The top feature of an IDE is the call tree: Show me all the callers of this function and all of their callers and so on. This is a game changer. It means that you can reverse engineer someone else's code (or even your own). And in practice, that's what your spend most of your time doing if you want to make changes that are congruent with the whole system. Eve claims to have tools to help with this despite not being statically typed. If I get time I would like to try it because the querying and matching parts of the system are very attractive.
