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Comment by Illniyar | Hacker News Reader

I think the major benefit I derive from what I mentioned is the constant visual cues and the immediate availability.

With buffers (unless I'm missing something) you need to type a command to list all your 'tabs' and another command to get to the tab in question. Project structure is similar - it's always visible, and you can always see what other files are close by.

I don't think that can be achieved with plugins, though I never knew there were plugins until now.

Do people who use vim regularly install plugins for it?

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Yes, all of this can be achieved using plugins, including immediate visibility of tabs and project structure. Check out powerline(https://github.com/powerline/powerline) or vim-airline(https://github.com/bling/vim-airline).

A nice configuration for Haskell which I often use to bootstrap new machines is haskell-vim-now(https://github.com/begriffs/haskell-vim-now). That includes almost all the features you mention.

Is there a screencast / youtube video that showcase VIM with most or all the features mentioned by Illniyar ?

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sr8cAIwdBs

Yes, I'd wager that regular Vim users employ a variety of plugins. Vim is a powerful editor out of the box, but it falls short of many IDE capabilities without leveraging plugins.

There are many packages on GitHub that will install and configure Vim for you with a variety of useful plugins and keyboard shortcuts out of the box--so after the installation is complete, you'll have a fully fledged Vim IDE ready to use.

One of my favorites is Joe Nelson's setup [0]. It's specific to Haskell development, but even if that's not relevant to your use-case, it's a very sleek demonstration of what Vim can do as an IDE--and a good starting point for customizing your setup (i.e. a very clean .vimrc file for inspiration). I use it basically as-is for my default Vim config and as a full IDE. Check out the keyboard shortcuts for quickly switching buffers, Git integration, and the shortcuts for visualizing project structure & quickly navigating files.

[0] https://github.com/begriffs/haskell-vim-now

You can use :tabe to open a new tab, and then `gt` and `gT` to switch tabs.

This is somehow controversial to some[1] but it never bothered me.

As far as file navigation though, I just use crtlp[2]

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/103590

[2]: https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim

Add this[1] to .vimrc for easy navigation between multiple files in each tab:

    map <C-J> <C-W>j<C-W>_
    map <C-K> <C-W>k<C-W>_
    set wmh=0

Load a new file with the split command:

    :sp <file>

and use Ctrl+j or Ctrl+k to switch between the splits. It's a handy way to organize and edit multiple files.

[1] http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Switch_between_Vim_window_splits_e...

I read that StackOverflow answer before and given the amount of upvotes it received, I presumed that it had something going for it.

I was already regularly comfortably using `Ctrl-^` to switch back and forth between the current and alternate buffers but I was also used to having different buffers open in different tabs and selecting them using either the `gt` family of commands or the `:tabfirst` family.

I like having the tab-bar provide visual cues for each of the buffers that I’m working with rather than having to type `:ls` to see the list of buffers (which can sometimes be very large as I often leave Vim running for a long time and if I do close, I usually restore it from a session).

Like you, I’ve yet to encounter any problems with this way of working. It’s possibly because I’ve never used any commands which utilise the quickfix buffer (`:make`, `:grep`, and `:helpgrep`) but maybe, there’s something else I’m missing?

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