I do not have the prowess of the pointy haired linux geek and I need the help of a good ide to spot those missing curly braces / syntax etc ( trivial mistakes).

I do not have the prowess of the pointy haired linux geek and I need the help of a good ide to spot those missing curly braces / syntax etc ( trivial mistakes). why can't you just enable syntax highlighting in vim? it has syntax files for most languages and will highlight/color words differently if they are recognized as valid commands in the particular language, and can do things like highlight the closing parenthesis or brace when you have the cursor over the opening one (or use % to jump to it).