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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

I've never really felt comfortable in vi. I first started using it in 1989 at home, used it throughout college, and then used it on-and-off during my career, but it's never really felt powerful compared to a GUI editor.

I want a scrollbar. I want a list of files in my project that I can just click on to open. I want tabs I can click. I want multiple windows that I can alt-tab to. And since I spend most of my time thinking and modifying code, I'm more often than not thinking in terms of tweaks and copy/pasting between files rather than "replace in this block of 3 words". A mouse and GUI just feels a lot more natural to me, even after 20 years of vi.

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I'm with you. I want tabs, I want multiple windows, I want an easy list of project files, and I don't want to waste time thinking about editing. That's why I use vim.

If anyone is looking for tabs in vi, try out the (you'll never guess) tab feature in vi http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/tabpage.html . What is great is that text completion (ctrl-p) works across tabs, so if you are using a library, open it up in a tab and you can ctrl-p away.

For extra points, learn to use hjkl and map your arrow keys to switch tabs.

It is very nice to have a tab for each of your files.

Until you have twenty files open and you can't find the right one (will happen sooner than you think, at least on largeish projects).

I like having 20+ tabs open, provided the text editor supports multiple rows of tabs so you can see the names.

I currently have 55 tabs open in IntelliJ (I counted). I have no trouble finding any of them. Side tabs and alphabetical sort are great.

...I have a persistent Vim session with ~600 files open. It's been in active use for over a year. It works great.

Yes, and? How is that related to "tabs don't work past about 20"?

Yes, this. About a year ago, I finally bothered to understand the buffer concept in vim (after a brief stint in emacs), and suddenly any tabbed editor felt clumsy.

I use VS2010 every day and the tabbed interface drives me nuts. I wish it was more conceptually like Emacs.

Yes, me too. The Vim extension is quite nice, but I wish it could do buffers rather than tabs.

I'm with you. I think an equivalent post could have been written on how programming in GUI is much better. What it comes down to is pretty boring and unsatisfying-- both have strengths and weaknesses, and these depend on the specific application.

Have you tried using gvim? It has the best of both worlds.

I agree. I just use vim because its available in any terminal and easier than emacs. But you can't pretend it isn't relatively primitive.

if you're on linux, ctrl+shift+T usually brings up a new terminal window if you're running a desktop. you can alt+tab between these just like you can alt+tab between GUI editor windows.

Just the opposite. I find all that distracting. My hands never leave the keyboard. The mouse is a nuisance. I'm far more productive without all the GUI crap.

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