You've already gotten some good answers while I was finishing my coffee, but here goes anyway.
The only time I miss a mouse is when I want to fire up a game that actually runs on my Mac (Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, etc.). I'd say the main reason I don't miss a mouse in vim is because I don't use a mouse anywhere else on my Mac. On a fresh format I create 4 desktops, and I bind CMD+1-4 to switch between these. Whenever I want to launch chrome/term/mail/whatever I use CMD+space and launch it directly from Spotlight. I use Magnet (http://magnet.crowdcafe.com - no affiliation, just a fan) to maximize/minimize/layout windows without having to use the _remarkably awful_ Mac window management UI.
While within vim I don't miss a scroll-wheel because bouncing around with / and ? is just so, so, so much faster. I really cannot stress enough how slow it now feels to scroll up and down a file searching for a specific string when I'm forced to do so. It's maddening for me now.
Your question re: a project panel, etc, is probably the best one. I think I may be an outlier here. I don't use NERDtree, but a lot (most, in fact) of my friends who use vim do. There are really two use cases for opening a file - direct from the term or in concert with an already open file. I typically know the structure of a project so I can just cd around or vim right/to/the/file.js If I'm already editing something I'll usually just :vsp to/the/other/file.erb or if I'm really lost as to where I am or where I'm trying to go I'll just CTRL+Z back to the term, cd & ag around until I find myself, fg back to vim, then :vsp to/where/I/now/know/Im/going.scss
I suspect if I actually spent the time to learn NERDtree I may be able to get around unknown projects better, but I've always felt pretty good about my workflow so I've just never committed to it.
Comments
You've already gotten some good answers while I was finishing my coffee, but here goes anyway.
The only time I miss a mouse is when I want to fire up a game that actually runs on my Mac (Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, etc.). I'd say the main reason I don't miss a mouse in vim is because I don't use a mouse anywhere else on my Mac. On a fresh format I create 4 desktops, and I bind CMD+1-4 to switch between these. Whenever I want to launch chrome/term/mail/whatever I use CMD+space and launch it directly from Spotlight. I use Magnet (http://magnet.crowdcafe.com - no affiliation, just a fan) to maximize/minimize/layout windows without having to use the _remarkably awful_ Mac window management UI.
While within vim I don't miss a scroll-wheel because bouncing around with / and ? is just so, so, so much faster. I really cannot stress enough how slow it now feels to scroll up and down a file searching for a specific string when I'm forced to do so. It's maddening for me now.
Your question re: a project panel, etc, is probably the best one. I think I may be an outlier here. I don't use NERDtree, but a lot (most, in fact) of my friends who use vim do. There are really two use cases for opening a file - direct from the term or in concert with an already open file. I typically know the structure of a project so I can just cd around or vim right/to/the/file.js If I'm already editing something I'll usually just :vsp to/the/other/file.erb or if I'm really lost as to where I am or where I'm trying to go I'll just CTRL+Z back to the term, cd & ag around until I find myself, fg back to vim, then :vsp to/where/I/now/know/Im/going.scss
I suspect if I actually spent the time to learn NERDtree I may be able to get around unknown projects better, but I've always felt pretty good about my workflow so I've just never committed to it.