This isn't a blog about why you should use Vim. That's obvious. If it isn't, read Why do those nutheads use Vi? Instead, this a tutorial about using Vim as a fully-fledged IDE, and specifically for PHP projects. Many Vim users would only use it for dipping in and out of the odd file on their computer, or maybe just on a remote server during an SSH session. I'm here to tell you that it can be configured to be more efficient and productive than your favourite IDE.
Vim is a lot more powerful than people think. Many people who use it would do so just for quickly editing a single file, but would use an IDE for their main development. But I've discovered recently that Vim is so extensible that it can do all the things that you thought it couldn't: code completion, syntax checking, project management, debugger integration and more.
Over the past few months I've been secretly working on a Jenkins plugin, partly because of my love for the chipper butler and all his efforts to improve the quality of your code, and partly because I wanted to take a look at Java.
I've been a Vim user for a couple of years, and love it. After a steep learning curve, your coding speed increases dramatically. As good as IDEs like Netbeans and Eclipse can be, the normal operations - navigating round the file, editing, copying, pasting, deleting - are never as efficient as they are when using Vim.
If you're a regular user of Netbeans IDE then, like me, you might sometimes get the feeling that you're not using it to its full potential. Take debugging for instance: did you know that you can use Netbeans to debug a web application by pausing at particular lines of code, and get a list of all the variables in the current scope? It takes a bit of setting up, but you can do it - here's how.