First I notice Fabien Sanglard's description of learning vim while doing a code review of GIT.

http://fabiensanglard.net/git_code_review/index.php

Then I'm watching Hand Made Hero setup a minimalist envornment for Windows.

https://forums.handmadehero.org/jace/videos/win32-platform/day001.html

Very interesting. So I've been trying it out. I thought the learning curve would be steep, but so far it is a cliff. I have Windows 7, and have spent at least a week learning vim, figuring out what plugins to install, and trying absorb all this. Not to mention a *.bat file hard coded to use the Visual C++ compiler from the command line, and nothing else. The VC++ is used for debugging. No IDE, no build system, no project files, nothing.

So far I've discovered these plugins which make vim very powerful.

* Pathogen - for easy pluging management with GIT

* NERDTree - text based file browser

* Taglist + ctags - jump to functins definitions

* YouCompleteMe - code completion

And I'm sure there are others. Figuring out all the stuff you have to edit in the .vimrc has been challenging. Trying to get these things working on Windows is also a pain. These things were up and running on Linux in no time. I'm sure that the Mac version will be just as easy.

I don't know about anyone else, but lately I feel like all I'm doing is installing, configuring, debugging, and hooking up other peoples code. Any change to the environment that breaks something can take days to resolve. Meanwhile, I don't feel like I'm coding anything.

Not sure if I will stick with this, but it sure feels right.

(1) Download Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition
(2) Install it.
(3) Done.

I've been fighting with that IDE since Visual C++ 6.0, and intelij, and Eclipse. Every year these things get bigger, slower, and more bloated. Using vim and command line tools will be very similar for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can call me crazy if you want, but I'm still giving it a go.

I'm one of those people SeanMiddleDitch doesn't understand :) I have the VS 2013 Community Edition installed but I don't use it. I find it really just slows me down since I'm not used to it. On the other hand, I don't really want to get used to it. I see no benefit from it over what I already do. I don't use vim or emacs either. I use Sublime Text, a language-appropriate build tool (premake5 for C or C++) and a command prompt (more often than not, my command prompt is via MSYS) for just about everything I code, regardless of language (the exception being Java).

Fwiw, using QtCreator should be similar for Win, Mac, and Lin, though I haven't personally tried it on anything other than Windows.

If you didn't chime in about Qt I would think you were dead. :-)

Not trying to start a new vim vs. emacs flame war (I don't think the last one finished). I was just wondering if anyone else is coding off the beaten path.

Just admit you don't use VC++ because you don't like it, and there will be nothing left to refute.

That's really got nothing to do with it. I don't like the ALL CAPS tabs at the top. But I'm on Linux during the day and Mac or Windows at night. It's nice to have everything the same.

I'm talking about the software equivalent to going out into the woods and living off the land. No IDEs, no build tools, just a text editor and a dream. It sounds like a 60s hippie programmer or something.