VIM can do this with a language server plugin now. It’s super refreshing to have compiler errors and symbol navigation inside native vim. Come back!

any pointers? i'd love to upgrade my beloved VIM from ctags-era navigation, but don't have time to shave the whole yak. Would love to hear your tips.

Multiple plugins are available to add LSP support in vim, such as coc.nvim (uses node.js, more features) or vim-lsp (lighter, written in vimscript).

Neovim is also going to add native LSP support as well as tree-sitter in their 5.0 release, it's already available in nightly builds.

The most straightforward option is probably coc.nvim, which tries to give a similar experience to VS Code out of the box.

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim https://github.com/prabirshrestha/vim-lsp https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig https://github.com/neovim/neovim

I'm mostly well served by a slew of ruby/rails plug-ins along with tags - but this so answer might be a good, somewhat modern starting point. I'm going to check out if vimspector can help me with my debug flow:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/51195409

ccls would be the language server for your C/C++ projects. Works very well even for a Qt project.

I don't know which JetBrains product(s) you are referring to, but in IntelliJ you can use ⌘ + B to go a symbol's definition instead of using your mouse/trackpad with ⌘ + Click.

There's probably a similar shortcut in their other IDEs (try right-click > Go To > Declaration or Usages and note the key combination listed next to it).

Wouldn't g ctrl+] work for jumping to definition with a tags file?

Not to speak for parent comment, but the reason I use vim plugins in JetBrains IDEs is to have all that shit "just work". Yeah, you can setup stuff to autogen tags, but it's not always reliable. If you care about other IDE features (I do) then the list of crap you need to do to get vim/nvim to work properly piles up endlessly. I'll take the IDE with it's nice appearance and features and slap the keybindings in any day over the reverse.

Indeed.

I suspect the reason a lot of people don't seem to refactor their code is because they would have to do so semi-manually with whatever hip-but-feature-bereft editor they've sworn allegiance to.

ctags (which is the way I used to do it) was always sort of hit or miss for me. JetBrains OTOH just works. Apparently there's a new way of doing it though, which I should look into.