At the end of the day, my biggest reason is that few of those work/look/act/configure the same as they did 10 years ago, and will undoubtedly change how they wo

At the end of the day, my biggest reason is that few of those work/look/act/configure the same as they did 10 years ago, and will undoubtedly change how they work/look/act/configure in the future. This isn't a bad thing, I just prefer to stick with what I know how to use efficiently to do the tasks I've done before. One thing to keep in mind: I don't just use a different set of tools, I have a different workflow. Vim rarely takes up a full screen. (well, half now we've all agreed on widescreen monitors...) As a quick breakdown of working on a project: - I usually have a 'command' terminal, where I run build commands, execute / debug the app, manage project files, etc... (usually in the root dir of the project I'm working on, so paths are relative and easy to work with everywhere) - I have a 'main editor' terminal, using Vim to open multiple files for editing, splitting the window and switching buffers on the fly based on what I'm doing. - I have a browser window with tabs open to various documentation/reference pages for the code I'm writing. This gives me my 'intellisense' equivalent, I guess. - I might open terminals temporarily to display other code, etc... when I want additional references displayed. (but only ever edit from the main editor window) - I use tools like cscope (or even just grep) to browse my source code, which I can even do from the editor. - I generally write a build.sh / run.sh / clean.sh I'll add to as I go, which wrap things like CMake, Make, lint tools, etc... The biggest perk is that I can work in 100% the same way from any system with an SSH client, with zero change to my workflow. I can reconfigure my entire development workspace on a clean system and be productive with a couple 'git clone' commands and running a shell script to 'yum/dnf install' a couple standard development tools from the default repos. I don't mean this defensively, I'm genuinely curious... What do you think an IDE gives you that other tools don't? The first two that come to mind are a tightly integrated build system (eg. creating a new source file automatically builds and links it with the project), and the GUI design tools that generate the relevant class files. (Those could be huge factors for some people) Is it simply the all-in-one packaging and integration between the tools? Thanks for taking the time to reply if you get through all that :)