Should I switch from my current editor to VIM or a

Question

In my programming life I have been using quite a bit of different text editors, most of the time I used notepad++ on Windows, gedit on Linux and currently Espresso (similar to Coda & textmate) on my Mac. I mainly do web development, so I spend most of the time editing PHP/JS/CSS/HTML files and interacting with git repositories.

A lot of people recommended using Vim and also a lot of people recommend using an IDE. I have used Vim some time (but never long enough to get fast with all its commands), but have never used an IDE for Web development.

I would like to know if you would recommend switching to vim or an IDE. The main reason why I am considering a switch to VIM or an IDE is that I think I can increase my editing speed with Vim or an IDE.

I would also like to know which IDE/plugins for Vim you would recomende for a web developer?

The most important features to me are:

• superb syntax highlighting
• auto code-completion
• easy file switching
• multi-language spellchecking (in HTML files)

Answer 1

I truly recommend the Eclipse IDE. It's great, runs in every operating system and it's very customizable. I use to compile C (for windows, linux and microcontrollers), C++, PHP and everything else.

It can also manage a Makefile like a charm :)

Answer 2

On Mac I love textmate, but it makes a big difference also as to which language you are writing in. This is probably why these questions aren't encouraged here...