Steamlined UX. With Vim split windows, I have to care about positioning. I need to rescale the windows so that I can see the code effectively. I need to think about window management. This automates it for me, and I have one less thing to think about.

Flexibility can be nice, but it can also get annoying. I don't want to micromanage behavior if the environment can do the right thing for me.

I frequently work with one vertical split in the middle with a class file on one side and the related spec on the other. I can relate to wanting to have a standard layout. I just frequently, split up the windows even more as I work. I used to find splits difficult to manage, but then I got used to/addicted to them. Personally, I would have difficulty with a fixed layout, but I can understand how it could be appealing.

By default Vim's split buffers have some fairly annoying behaviours -- for example, if you accidentally close the file browser you have taking up the entire left hand of the window, all of the other buffers gobble up that space instead of retaining your painstakingly assembled layout.

I guess to each their own, but I like the default behavior of when a split buffers is closed that the other buffers resize to fill the void. I'd prefer to see the space available used rather than trying to find something to fill the empty buffer with.

Unrelated, but I also enjoy being able to Ctrl+w,Shift+[hjkl] to move splits around relative to the other splits.

> I guess to each their own, but I like the default behavior of when a split buffers is closed that the other buffers resize to fill the void. I'd prefer to see the space available used rather than trying to find something to fill the empty buffer with.

Yeah, but the point is I closed it accidentally. So now I reopen NERDTree or whatever and have to spend a bunch of time micromanaging my splits back into the arrangement I just had them in.

Wasted space sucks, but so does having things wreck my layout in an over-eager attempt to avoid it.

This can be a common problem especially when working with a module which occupies a split, but doesn't depend on the file you're working on, like NERDTree. I've solved this problem in a fairly lightweight and elegant manner with the Bclose module, however, by (c)mapping bd to Bclose