We decided early on to scrap the MPLAB IDE and use cygwin & make instead. After a month or so I finally convinced the other mentors to use VIM. Now we're actually teaching the students how to use it.
An invaluable development tool I found a few years ago is cscope (
http://cscope.sourceforge.net/). It parses all the source & header files in your build and creates a 'database' that allows you to quickly jump to a function definition, find all calls of a function, find all references to a symbol, etc. Even better you can integrate it with VIM so all you have to do is put your curser on a function call, hit <ctl>] and you're now at the function definition; hit g<ctl>\ and you have a list of all occurrances of the symbol under the cursor. I'd probably be half as productive at work if I didn't have VIM & cscope. Give it a try. If you need help send me a PM or start a new thread.