INinDigiNeous·Apr 13, 2016
The fact that I can customize VIM to suit my needs with modern methods and plugins that bring same kind of functionality found in more modern editors/development envs to the powerhouse that is VIM.
For example, these are some of my favorites:
https://valloric.github.io/YouCompleteMe/ - Code completion for C/C++ and other languages
https://github.com/ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim - TextMate style ctrl+p fuzzy file finder
https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree - Tree explorer plugin for browsing files
https://github.com/vim-airline/vim-airline - Customizable status line for showing all kinds of useful info about currently edited file
https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive - Git wrapper that works together with airline
https://github.com/mhinz/vim-startify - Shows your most recently edited files and favorite files on the start screen
https://github.com/
Read the rest
tpope/vim-abolish - Smart text replacement, easily replace eg. getColor, GetColor -> getTransparency, GetColor and so on
And this combined with the fact that I can do all of this from the tip of my fingers, without having to touch the mouse, with high customizable commands that go into my muscle memory, there is no substitute for VIM for me.
I've worked with Eclipse, Xcode, Visual Studio. They have some pretty nice features, like interactive debugging that are hard to replicate with Vim, but I'm more of a "print debug message" kind of guy anyway, so that doesn't bother me.
The biggest hinderance with Visual UIs is that I have to use the mouse, and that sucks. So much faster to do text selection, copying, replacement, renaming and so on straight from the keyboard, once you get used to it.
I'm still discovering active new ways to customize VIM after over 15 years of using it.