The ones I have used (IntelliJ, Netbeans and eclipse) were quite effortless to jump between.

I doubt Visual Studio will be much harder.

Jetbrains covers Ruby, Python, JS, C and more and it would surprise me bigtime if those language specific versions aren't quite similar to the plain Java version as well.

I think Vim is far easier to learn than Visual Studio. The menus are completely unintuitive, bureaucratic and painful to use.

I always use cl.exe from the command line with Makefiles.

Why not stop using the menus then? ;)

Visual Studio can be operated pretty much entirely from the keyboard. The default shortcuts are fairly sensible, and you can always add more from the options.

There is one major omission: changing build configuration or build target. (You can give the configuration manager a keyboard shortcut, and do it that way, but it's a bit unwieldy.) So I keep the relevant widget in the toolbar and use the mouse to do it. And there are a few things I haven't bothered to assign keyboard shortcuts to, on account of how rarely I use them.

But in general, I use the keyboard to perform actions, and it doesn't feel like I use the mouse any more than I do with emacs (which I use without scrollbar, toolbar, or menu bar).

I do use the mouse a lot for moving the cursor and selecting text in both cases. (Visual Studio is actually slightly better for this, because you can Ctrl+drag to get word selection.)

Your comment is the last one that has a reply link, so I'm using it, though none of the following applies to it at all.

Over the years I've observed that VS criticism is downvoted quite rigorously here. This is in stark contrast to the overall sentiment on the Internet, so I suspect corporate downvoting here.

The moderators should take a look at it.

> Why not stop using the menus then? ;)

Because you have to learn more commands/shortcuts than in Vim? ;)

Won't say anything bad about vim, I use it on a daily basis but normal IDEs aren't necessarily as bad as some people seem to want to portray them:

A few hints to get reasonably good, fast:

Use ctrl+arrowleft/arrowright to jump words at a time.

Use shift to select as you move.

This works together so ctrl + shift + arrowright means select to the next word boundary.

At keast in some IDEs this will also stop at word boundaries inside a variable or function name but this should be configurable. I prefer it this way though.

Next: in the menus you'll often see a hint that tells you a direct shortkey for that menu option. This holds true for both window menus on the top as well as in the right click context menu.

A few hints to get reasonably good, fast (in vim):

Use w, W to jump words at a time.

Use v before moving to select as you move.

This works together, so vw will select to the next word boundary.

Press i to insert text, escape to stop inserting text.

Next: in the :help files, you will find a hint that tells you a direct shortcut for that command (like :help quit, or :help write, or just plain :help).

I personally already use vim, actually prefer it when I remote to servers.

I guess my point is just that it seems to me a lot of people (not necessarily you guys) use vim as some kind of cargo cult.

When you are trying to learn a new thing, and you refuse to learn more than you already know, you are guaranteeing that you will be disappointed.

If you aren't willing to learn more than the Vim shortcuts, it's unfair to criticize Visual Studio or any other product. You are the problem.

I think it is very hard to be more unintuitive than vim.

Vim is unintuitive at first, but there's excellent documentation.

With Visual Studio, the documentation is horrible, you always encounter stale links to unorganized and regularly changing microsoft.com websites.

Relatively basic things are left unexplained and documentation is outsourced to Stackoverflow:

1) How do I restore the output window I clicked it away in order to make the editor usable in the first place?

2) What the heck is a "project" and why do I need one?

3) Why do I need so many frigging clicks to get to the debugger (the debugger itself is nice though I have to admit)?

The list goes on an on. All these things are far simpler with vim and gdb: Need to debug x87 fpu registers? One simple google search and you have an instructive plaintext website that tells you everything and off you go.

>"1) How do I restore the output window I clicked it away in order to make the editor usable in the first place?"

There are many ways, it comes down to personal preference. For example, would you prefer restoring the Output window using a keyboard or a mouse?

>"2) What the heck is a "project" and why do I need one?"

The same reason you probably use a makefile when working with Vim, to manage your dependencies and build configurations.

>"3) Why do I need so many frigging clicks to get to the debugger (the debugger itself is nice though I have to admit)?"

I don't know what you're talking about here, the debugger is accessible with hardly any effort at all. How many clicks are you using to bring it up?

>"The list goes on an on. All these things are far simpler with vim and gdb: Need to debug x87 fpu registers? One simple google search and you have an instructive plaintext website that tells you everything and off you go."

Depends on your use cases. I've personally never found MSDN documentation lacking, plus it's ridiculously easy to use. For example, when coding in C#, highlight a language keyword and press F1, you'll be brought to online documentation about that language feature.

I don't know about visual studio, but I use IDEA which have a pretty good documentation. Far better than vim's one. And I need less because things are quite intuitive in IDEA.

How long have you used each of them and for what?