I have a very short .vimrc, and beyond that my only "plugin" is tmux. :-) For my Rails work, I run one vim in app/models, one in app/controllers, another in app/views, app/assets/stylesheets, and app/assets/javascripts, each in a separate tmux session. That's the right-hand terminal. In the left-hand terminal I have tmux sessions for git, the server log, a db connection, specs, and another miscellaneous vim session for migrations, config edits, Rake tasks, etc.

I use a separate xfce workspace for each client, arranged horizontally in one row. Sometimes I fill up five at a time. Keeping each project in a separate workspace gives me good isolation between them.

I don't really have anything against adding plugins, but with this setup I'm very fast already. I just glanced at Ctrl-P, and I'm not sure it'd add much. I'm pretty good at saying `:!grep -r foo ..` to search all of `app` whenever necessary.

If there were such a thing as a vim spellchecker that understood LaTeX, now that's a plugin I'd be interested in. . . .

If I understand what you want, I believe Vim-LaTeX does what you want http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=475

I've used nvi for over 15 years. Also use a small vim install here and there. Also have done several talks on grokking ex mode and regex at local vim user groups.

In my early days when first learning the system I used ee, a HP public domain pico clone which is distributed on *BSD systems for new users.

The original Berkeley UNIX had a modded vi named edit which was aliased to ee and while normal vi operation was aliased to e. I'm assuming ee stood for easyeditor back then.

The video you linked states in its about section that nvi is not customizable. This is simply not true. It's just as easy to script as ed and ex.

Though Bostic never included lisp support like the Joy's editor for extending vi with the shell has always been the main UNIX way of doing it. The classic tutorial to show someone how to extend nvi is to have them do external spell checking with one of the many spell programs.

Yes; I've been using Vim for nearly two decades now without plugins. I have a small .vimrc, but that's it.

The main reason I do so is that I frequently login into a variety of systems where I have no control over what version of vim is installed or what base packages are available. As such, even if I bothered to place the relevant plugins in my home directory, I may not be able to use them.

At this point in my life, I tend to stick with software that has the best defaults and requires minimal tweaking.

That makes it quick and relatively painless for me to recreate my development environment wherever I need to.

> Does anyone even use Vim without plugins anymore?

I use vim for almost 20 years for everything except when I'm developing in java (but even then I use eclipse with a vi plugin).

And no plugins at all.

Which eclipse vi plugin do you use?

I use http://www.viplugin.com/index.htm . It costs 19$ and it is worth it. When it lacks some vim feature -- there is an easy way to invoke the real vim, do some editing there, and then swith to eclipse back.

I tried eclim but it lacked too many eclipse features. It is maybe that I didn't try it enough, but I was (and still am) happy with viplugin to really try something else.

I use and recommend vrapper

Probably eclim

But eclim lets you get Eclipse features in vim, not vice versa... is there something I'm missing here?

It also allows you to use vim in eclipse when editing a file.

Vanilla, because I never have any idea what plugins are going to be installed on the systems I touch (probably none). It's the same argument for learning vi. It's there everywhere. Similarly, it probably has no plugins.

I use vanilla vim as a handy lowest common denominator editor when working on whichever random system I happen to be on. Emacs is for when you want to customize, in my book.

The only plugin I use is ctrl-p.

I use vanilla vim only when I have to. I admire these guys who can do with vanilla vim. The plugin I cannot do without is NERDTree. That should be integrated into Vim itself.

I agree. Most of the vim defaults are fine (expect for tabs!), but NERDTree is a must!

I couldn't live without tabbar - https://github.com/vim-scripts/TabBar

I have a bunch of plugins installed, but only use ctrl-p regularly. gitgutter is also handy, but I could easily live without it.

I don't use anything except NERDTree. Is that close enough to vanilla to count?

why not netrw?

I don't know it. I tend to prefer vanilla setups with minimal customization, so it's very rare that I look at what plugins or add-ons or mods are available. NERDTree came to me by way of coworker, and I've grown to like it enough to put it in when I go to a new setup.

From the name... I'm guessing it lets you vim into a remote? (Looked it up; basically, yup.) That doesn't sound useful for my purposes. I prefer to SSH in and boot up an instance of vim on the server. Preferring vanilla makes that not such a bad thing. :P

netrw is actually a built in, not a plugin and acts as a file browser like NERDtree.

That said, I've never found netrw's behavior to be as friendly as NERDtree's at least out of the box.