After all my ranting and raving on what I think would be awesome to have as an IDE, I somehow stumbled across exactly what I was trying to describe. ViEmu looks to be the perfect combination of VIM and Visual Studio.

Well, I did get very excited when I saw it and so I downloaded and installed it. I’ve only had a play for an hour or so, and by the looks of it it’s very close to what I’m picturing in my mind’s eye. I’m not sure if it’s bang on though - and for the princely sum of USD $69.95 it’d better be bang on before I invest my beans into it :) It does feel a little different, but I’m not sure if it’s because it’s not quite the same as VIM or because it’s suffering from being inside a Visual Studio environment. Thankfully I’ve got 30 days to play with it and get a good idea before having to purchase.

So, I’ll take my time and I’ll let you know what I think. Hopefully by the time the trial period is up I’ll not only have a good idea as to whether or not this fits the bill, but I’ll also be better with the VIM commands in general.