The log browser is helpful for many things, including seeing who did what when.

It also allows you to diff any two versions

gedit is ok, but like with base vi you probably can gain a lot more from some other tools. Emacs and Eclipse are two main ones I'd recommend. Emacs takes a little to get used to, but as you settle it, it's utility become apparent. For example, to debug with gdb, just launch it from inside emacs. Then you can hop between the gdb prompt and your source, and set breakpoints in the source with a simple keystroke, etc. Probably the main difficulty is that it's hard to tell someone about the key bindings, since they're meant to be used, not talked about. (I can do all sorts of stuff quickly, but have to do it and watch my fingers to be able to say what keys I'm hitting)...

Eclipse is similar to Emacs in that its a platform for development tools. Just that Eclipse does it with Java while Emacs does it with Lisp. It's a bit more heavyweight, though.

I usually end up with a simple emacs session  (only split to two windows) and alt-tab to a browser. Google is your friend.  :-)

Oh, another handy thing in emacs is that when you use it to compile, it colors the compiler output. And if you hit enter while on any error or warning, it will pop up the source code to that line in the other window/pane. And there's a simple key combo to go to the next warning/error. Quite handy.