Vim made easy: how to get your favorite IDE features in Vim

“The Vim text editor is a favorite of many programmers and
system administrators. Although it provides an exceptional amount
of power and flexibility, it can be somewhat intimidating for new
users. Programmers who transition to Vim from a conventional
integrated development environment (IDE) tend to find the paradigm
shift a bit disorienting.

“I often get e-mail from readers who are looking for ways to
make Vim more developer-friendly. A common complaint is that the
editor doesn’t come with standard IDE features out of the box and
it’s not always clear how to configure it to provide equivalent
functionality. The secret to unlocking Vim’s real magic is to take
advantage of its powerful plugin system and the large ecosystem of
third-party scripts that offer editor augmentations for various
tasks. To get you started, I have compiled a short list of useful
tips and programming plugins for Vim that will make IDE refugees
feel right at home.

“Although Vim is largely designed around text-based interface
idioms and is most effective when used accordingly, there are
graphical shells available that make the program a bit more
manageable for new users. Instead of running Vim in a terminal
window, you might want to try GVim, the basic GUI version. It has
configurable menus and toolbars that make the program’s most
essential features easily accessible with a mouse. It also lets you
use native file dialogs and gives you the ability to resize buffer
panes by clicking and dragging. GVim is available for both Linux
and Windows. The equivalent for Mac OS X is MacVim, which provides
a native Cocoa user interface, including menu integration.”

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