For me the path has mostly been BlueJ (Java) to Eclipse (Java) to Visual Studio (C#) to Eclipse (Android) to Intellij (Python/Android/JavaScript) to vim (JavaScript/Python).
Some people try to turn vim into an IDE. Personally I like to use a real IDE when I feel like I need it (when I'm working in an unfamiliar codebase or when I need to debug).
I love vim for writing small programs (command line utilities and client side JavaScript) and editing code (such as HTML, CSS, LaTeX). For single page web applications the best IDE for me is the browser in combination with a simple text editor.
I write python professionally and I use vim exclusively, but I have pylint + jedi plugins and could not imagine working without them.
I'm also not convinced that depriving new programmers of real-time syntax checking actually helps them learn. Wouldn't immediate feedback help them memorize the correct syntax?
I learned working with Visual Studio and, yes, I think that helped. Even jsut being able to press "." and see what methods and properties were publicly available on something was helpful