Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 8th Edition

Chapter 11. Vim Enhancements for Programmers

Text editing is only one of Vim’s strong suits. Good programmers demand powerful tools to ensure efficient and proficient work. A good editor is only a start and by itself isn’t enough. Many modern programming environments attempt to provide comprehensive solutions, when all that is really necessary is a powerful and efficient editor with some extra smarts.

Programming tools offer extra features ranging from editors with syntax coloring, auto indentation and formatting, keyword completion, and so on to full-blown integrated development environments (IDEs) with sophisticated integration that build up complete development ecosystems. These IDEs can be expensive (e.g., Visual Studio¹) or free (Eclipse), and even though computer resource demands aren’t as dominant, often something lightweight is sufficient. Vim fulfills the lightweight space by providing some IDE-ish features and, with community-provided plug-ins, approaches IDE functions. (For a deeper dive into developing with Vim IDE plug-ins, see Chapter 15, “Vim as IDE: Some Assembly Required”.)

Programmers’ tasks vary, and so do their technology requirements. Small development tasks are easily completed with simple editors that offer little more than text editing capabilities. Large multicomponent, multiplatform, and multistaff efforts almost demand the heavy lifting IDEs provide. But from anecdotal experience, many veteran programmers feel that IDEs offer little more than extra complexity ...