For example, I use command-t plugin (way better than fuzzy finder btw), but if you are in the nerdTree buffer and try to open a file with command-t, it’ll open the file in the nerdTree buffer. You can get around with this by hitting ctrl-k first but that’s sort of a pain.

Right now I’m also having issues with code folding in vim, I’m using indent as the ‘foldmethod’ type, and the behavior is just really odd. I’m sure I’ll get it worked out as to what’s wrong, but the time I have to constantly spend ‘mucking around’ in vim – with my .vimrc file, plugins, etc gets very time consuming. (I know it should pay off in the end, but it seems to be a never ending thing I’m having to do.)

I was hungering for that kind of integration, and therefore I’m currently using Emacs with Vimpulse (an enhanced version of viper-mode), and loving it. Of course it doesn’t quite feel like 100% vim when editing (I’d say I’m at about 95% of my pure-vim editing efficiency), but the integration of external features (debugging, etc) is very attractive to me. On the whole, I feel like I’m getting the best of both worlds. I still have Vim’s editing efficiency, while getting access to emacs’ crazy extensibility and all those IDE-attributes that Vim was never intended to take on. I could say that my editor is still Vim, but the IDE is Emacs.

Has anyone been through a similar experience?

It supports h,j,k,l, find using ‘/’ and ‘n’ for ‘next’, moving by word, $ and 0 for begin/end of line, G to jump to a line number (or just ‘G’ to jump to end of file), x, dd, Y, p/P, zc/zo for code-folding… there’s more I’m not remembering to be sure. It even supports :w, which will open a ‘save as…’ dialog for new files. Unfortunately, if you want to save the current file under a different name, you still have to use the menus for that for whatever reason, but you get a lot of features, and the editor doesn’t slow down a bit. I’ve been using it for at least a couple years now.

I use vim if I have to edit remote code, and I’ve recently started playing with MacVim to see if it adds any benefit (I can’t find one at first glance). I’m always on the lookout for a “killer editor”, though :)

The apparent stagnation of Textmate led me to trying out MacVim, which I liked lots and from there I started testing all sorts of FLOSS applications with a view to replacing what I was using daily. I found out that Inkscape and Gimp did what I needed them to and so I could kiss goodbye to hefty Adobe licences (I design for screen only so no need for CMYK in Gimp). After that I just took the plunge – ditched OS X to go fully FLOSS.

And I’m loving it.

Good article. Except for the last statement about OS X’s terminal not being scriptable. What exactly do you mean by that? The terminal shell is bash, easily (one of) the most scriptable shell interface(s) on the planet. Always remember that your pretty Mac UI is a fully certified UNIX OS underneath, and that your terminal is your interface into that underlying OS. Whatever you wan to script in that shell, I assure you that you can do it.