Eclipse is not fundamentally less productive than vim; it's just productive along a different axis. Eclipse can sling around Java syntax like no other, but it's

Eclipse is not fundamentally less productive than vim; it's just productive along a different axis. Eclipse can sling around Java syntax like no other, but it's no better than notepad at editing text. On the other hand, vim has a very cursory understanding of Java syntax (as in, it knows that "for" is a keyword and "{" starts an indented block; i.e., just what is necessary for syntax highlighting and indenting). As a result, eclipse is really good at moving around your source, which is important when editing large software. Vim, on the other hand, is more of a tactical editor; it lets you compose a small set of primitives into a incantation that will rearrange arguments in a function call, and then compose that with the repetition primitives to do basic refactoring. The effect is the same, but the way you go about it is very different.