Ok, I have to ask...

At the risk of starting a huge controversy (yet another), I must ask the question: why would one want to use vi/emacs* to edit bash, awk, perl, python, [...] scripts or java, c/c++, [...] programs

It all started because I'm looking for a good IDE to edit my bash scripts and from what I see on the web, a lot of people seem to find vi or emacs amazing for that. For instance:
Linux.com :: Turn Vim into a bash IDE
Bash IDE Recommendations - Ubuntu Forums

Now the majority of my personal experience with IDEs come from using Eclipse for my java programing. To be honest it would never even cross my mind to work on a big java project using something like vi/emacs*

* I should mention here that my experience with vi/emacs is extremely limited. However I do believe that they are both console-oriented tools (let's exclude emacs' GUI for the sake of the discussion... kinda). Apologies for the ones who will be offended by the coupling of those 2 tools throughout my post, comparing them is not the point of this post and from Eclipse's point of view, they are rather similar.

So back to Eclipse**. When I code in Java, among the many things I expect from Eclipse are:

- syntax check (including warnings)/real-time compilation
- refactoring (renaming, moving, extracting values, methods, ...)
- (fairly) clean project-oriented structure
- versioning (CVS, SVN,...)
- Running/Debugging (step by step, value of variables, breakpoints, ...)
- templates, auto completion
- following dependencies (F3 on a class name brings you to it, ...)
- hover over documentation
- reverse engineering (although I usually use NetBeans for that)
- multiple languages integration (EPIC for perl, ...)
- Others: comparing files, exporting as jar/zip/...,

That's just off the top of my head, I'm probably missing many more. Now I really don't see how something like vi/emacs* could compete with that kind of features, most of them requiring pretty complex GUI interactions. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure vi/emacs* can be unbeatable on editing files as general editors, but as far as programming/scripting go and for specific languages, I don't see how they could be more suitable than something like Eclipse**.

** note that I'm sure NetBeans is great too, let's not get into comparing those two, or any similar ones for that matter

I heard there are a few Eclipse plug-ins for bash, I'll try them soon. They may not have all the afore-mentioned features yet, but surely they COULD (since Eclipse's got pretty much everything it takes).

Now for people interested in providing their input, PLEASE put your ego/faith aside and only bring up ARGUMENTS in favor (or defavor) of vi/emacs*. I'm actually quite curious to see what people have to say, and eager to discover unsuspected things about vi/emacs*..!!

Cheers,

Anthony