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Comment by misuse-permit | Hacker News Reader

> I love VIM and nothing can come close to the speed I can edit in VIM, esp. not anything you have to drive with a mouse

A contrived example, but I'd like to see someone edit a Java project faster in VIM than I do in Eclipse.

Look, I know how to use VIM better than the next guy (you'll just have to trust me on this), but when it comes to writing code for large projects I can't stand using VIM. It makes me feel like I'm looking through this tiny window to my code. Give me a mouse and a powerful IDE, and it's like I suddenly have a 10,000ft view of the world.

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I prefer Eclipse with VI plugin. You get the best of both worlds. And if I'm not happy with the vi plugin implementation, I can always continue editing in actual VIM by typing :vi in Eclipse.

All, that being said, I have heavily customized VIM with ctags, cscope, Command+T plugin and taglist.

Command+T alone is really worth it, you can open any file in the entire project structure by just typing a few letters (just like Eclipse's CTRL+SHIFT+t, but works on any file type).

With all these I can navigate code, and edit pretty much like I am in Eclipse, but unlike Eclipse this combo works for C,C++, Ruby, Python, Perl, Javascript etc. as well.

Ctrl+Shift+R opens files in eclipse.

For a less flawed example, let's compare someone using stock Eclipse with someone using Eclipse with that Vi plugin activated.

In that case, I think it would depend on the task at hand. For refactoring code and moving massive swaths of text around, stock Eclipse would win. For making small patches and writing new code from scratch, VIM would probably win.

I am referring to software such as viplugin. You're still in eclipse, so anything you do in eclipse without the plugin still works, but you also get Vi-style editing.

The point here is that the discussion is about input styles, not "IDE vs Classical Editor".

EDIT: or this one: http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/home/ there is a bunch out there.

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