What's wrong with buffers? (Not attacking, just genuinely curious)
Like you, I loved my vim tabs. But "state" is what changed my mind.
In a few keystrokes, sure I could switch tabs. Right, right, right, right, there that's the tab I want. But it's coupled to my project state: if I close a tab, there goes the muscle memory for that session. Now it's "right-right" to get to the thing I need instead of "right-right-right".
Buffers are invariant to your session state. In a few keystrokes, I could just search for the buffer by the first few letters of its filename.
I routinely keep >500 buffers open in emacs. Ten projects, half a year of journal entries, a few dozen mail messages. Having all those things available in the same number of keystrokes no matter where I am is immensely helpful.
Like you, I loved my vim tabs. But "state" is what changed my mind.
In a few keystrokes, sure I could switch tabs. Right, right, right, right, there that's the tab I want. But it's coupled to my project state: if I close a tab, there goes the muscle memory for that session. Now it's "right-right" to get to the thing I need instead of "right-right-right".
Buffers are invariant to your session state. In a few keystrokes, I could just search for the buffer by the first few letters of its filename.
I routinely keep >500 buffers open in emacs. Ten projects, half a year of journal entries, a few dozen mail messages. Having all those things available in the same number of keystrokes no matter where I am is immensely helpful.
It's like Huffman coding for your workspace.