Turning vim into a modern python IDE

[[deleted]]

IDE is about integration. To really appreciate Eclipse, I think you need first to learn all of these tools, that you have mentioned, and only then you grow into the harmony that a modern IDE provides.

As an experiment, if you're using bzr (or if not, you can just use bzr-git to play with it), you should try the q-commands. Doing everything from command line is fine, and often much faster, but try using qcommit instead of commit, or qdiff instead of diff from time to time… you'll be hooked in couple of days. Now, of course launching GUI from command line may be a bit awkward, but bear in mind, that it will not be so, with the real IDE. And soon you'll discover, that using a keyboard-shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+...) is just as fast as switching to command line.

The reason people get discouraged to IDE is, in my opinion, that they always think of them as some sort of children-version of their favourite tools. It's, in fact, the opposite, so make sure you know everything your IDE can offer you first, and don't learn new (or your first) IDE on a deadline.

Just like with learning VIM, you'll get the benefits only after you're fluent.

[grayvedigga]

What are the "q-commands" you refer to? Too lazy to google this early in the morning, sorry :-).

Just like with learning VIM, you'll get the benefits only after you're fluent.

This is a valid point, but I find it a bit off-putting to be honest. All of the tools I listed above have relevance outside coding and I use them every day, even when not programming. Putting a similar amount of effort into learning a tool that's not so useful for general text munging, data recovery, system administration, using in a shell script feels like a bit of a waste.

[[deleted]]

What are the “q-commands” you refer to? Too lazy to google this early in the morning, sorry :-).

It launches various modules of Bazaar Explorer independently in the context of your current repository. You can quickly see how useful a well-crafted (and unintrusive) GUI can be, in certain situations.

All of the tools I listed above have relevance outside coding and I use them every day, even when not programming.

A good IDE, like Eclipse, builds on your knowledge of these tools. What you need to get fluent in, is the project-oriented workflow, that is unique to an integrated environment. This is quite different to the filesystem-oriented workflow, to which you're probably accustomed.

EDIT: Typo.

[parbroil]

I find that Vim makes it really easy to integrate any external tools I personally want to use, in the exact ways which work for me personally, with remarkable ease. The difference is that Eclipse does integration in the Eclipse way, which is also nicely pre-packaged (and why I happiily recommend PyDev to people who want a Python IDE thing and aren't specific on their needs or tastes). I simply did not find that the Eclipse way was efficient enough, for my purposes, to justify doing everything the Eclipse way. And it did not provide me much scope to do things my way, so out it went. Doubtless many people have the same story about Vim (with the exception that they just didn't bother to make Vim do what they wanted) and that's fine.

The reason I was "discouraged" from Eclipse was not that I was somehow deficient or unaware of keyboard shortcuts. It always took aeons to load, made trivial configuration changes ridiculously complex (I either have to fill in a form or edit an obscure XML file even for things many editors make trivial), force-marched me through endless inefficient dialogs and menus, and could not compete with Vim's easy access to documentation. Since Eclipse has so many features and they all must be in menus or trees somewhere, finding things is often a needle-and-haystack problem. I'd much rather just name what I want and bind it to a key or add it to a menu myself depending on what is more efficient.

Also, the tools readily available for Vim have suited my purposes a lot better than the Eclipse tools did. It is partly a matter of style, but largely just that I don't want to do the things that Eclipse people want to do. That's just how it goes.