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sorry I know there is a wealth of resources on this topic, particularly there is a very good post here and here.

Now I am a complete beginner when it comes to installing from source and all the intricacies of setting environment variables, path and whatnot. However I feel like my goal is rather simple: I want to set up a python development environment in the terminal like the image showed in the second link i.e

  1. From the terminal I should be able to call mvim (or vim whatever works best for python dev.) and stay within the terminal (i'm not sure if there is a reason for staying within the terminal but I guess it means less mouse clicking is needed)

  2. There should be a file drawer (I heard the "alloy" one is preferred over "NERDTree") available

  3. The text editor should look good, with the transparent background and color scheme like in the second link again.

  4. I read some stuff about "Janus" being good for beginners like myself, so that would be nice to have.

That is pretty much it. Just to give you an idea of an ideal answer: I really need to be spoon-fed on this one; To give you an idea I have no idea what or where my "PATH" is or what the ".profile" or ".bashrc" I would also love it if someone could explain a little bit about the reason we need to run certain commands in the installation as I am interested in learning the shell on my mac.

EDIT: I do have brew installed if that helps...

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    Why you would like to use an terminal editor then instead of an IDE like PyCharm? jetbrains.com/pycharm Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 10:41
  • Thanks for your comment. I actually have pycharm installed and working already, along with IDLE. There are a few reasons I would like to use an in terminal text editor. Firstly I find it annoying that whenever I install a new python module it is recognized by my "terminal python" but not by IDLE or pycharm. It seems more direct therefore to use the python in the terminal along with a text editor. Secondly I want to use the mouse as little as possible. I hope that explains things a bit. Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 11:03

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  1. $ brew install vim or $ brew install macvim should get you a reasonably up-to-date install. The first one will be terminal-only but the second one will get you a GUI as well which may come handy in the future. Whether you are working in the terminal or in the GUI, the mouse is virtually useless in Vim (except for resizing windows, maybe). For what it's worth, you don't really use the mouse that much in IDEs either: everything has a shortcut.

  2. The file drawer is not that useful in general but, if you really need one that works the same in CLI Vim and GUI Vim, go with NERDTree. Note that Vim already comes with a very powerful file explorer so… maybe you should try it before going plugin-crazy. See :help netrw. Alloy, is a MacVim fork that adds a Mac OS X-like file drawer to the MacVim GUI so it's irrelevant if you plan to work in the terminal.

  3. Looking "good" is entirely subjective. There are hundreds of colorschemes to choose from and dozens of monospaced fonts suitable for programming. Colorschemes, transparent backgrounds… you can find many tutorials/blog posts online.

  4. Janus and other similar distributions are huge and bloated piles of crap that lure you with their "easy install" and sexy screenshots into thinking that you can become an instant vimmer without any effort. In the end, you get addicted to fancy plugins and other people's settings and mappings instead of learning your editor and configuring it your way. By the sound of your question, it's no wonder that those things are successful.

Your question is too broad and too specific at the same time. You set yourself ridiculously big goals and expect people to walk through all the steps… that's not how this site works.

Instead, set yourself smaller goals at first and go big, one step at a time.

  • Get used to the command-line.
  • Learn basic Vim usage with vimtutor.
  • Read Vim's :help.
  • Find problems, inefficiencies, and look for solutions.
  • etc.

Do all that on the side, when you have some free time, and in the mean time, just use PyCharm: it's currently the best Python IDE and it even has a vi emulation plugin!

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