$ 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.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.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.
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!