If you are currently in a anti-IDE frame of mind (which I cycle into from time to time), tmux can be a useful way to use vim and also retain the ability to look at several pieces of output ...

1. without a bunch of floating terminal windows
2. hitting C-z and typing fg over and over.

Current Setup

I went through a period on intense tool customization, but I find it pretty hard to pick back up on all the little customizations if I walk away from a toolset for a while. I've since been wary of keeping too many dotfiles. However, a few lines aint so bad.

Minimum Customization?

• Changing M-b (the prefix for any tmux shortcut) to something that isn't in the dead center of the keyboard ლ(ಠ 益 ಠლ). I chose M-a
• Re-run the last command in my 'compile' pane, which is usually something like gcc [unholy list of options] or cargo run [unholy list of options]. If you have a compile/watch system like gulp and watchify in the node world, not required!

And so here we are .tmux.conf

Lastly, as a bonus, I put together a shell script to open tmux with 3 panes and run vim. Completely optional, but also sort of useful if you reboot or kill the session.