Beloved Monks,

In searching to find what people use on Windows for a Perl editor, vim inevitably shows up. As someone who is relatively new to *nix and programming, I actually initially thought that this was some sort of joke played on noobs who would ask what editor they should use. However, it has happened enough times that I'm pretty sure it's not :)

The general opinion seems to be "vim is the best once you get over the learning curve." That is fine; I'm just curious what vim gives you, as a Perl developer, that other editors do not? (Aside from, of course, "I've used vi since the 80s.")

I'm sure the answer must lie in some of its more complicated features; every editor and their mother does syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, parentheses-matching, regex searching, etc.

So I'm curious what you like best about it. A flat list of features isn't as interesting as "I can't live without X."

Again, please know this is coming from someone who is seriously considering using it--I have no interest in ridiculing anyone for their choice of editor or anything silly like that. I personally use TextMate on OS X as my main editor, as usually I'm on the mac. But the need to do something in Windows does occasionally arise, and hence my curiosity.

Thanks!

I'm a peripheral visionary... I can see into the future, but just way off to the side.

In reply to Vim and You by nefigah

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