I also have some code on computers standing on the other side of the atlantic, into which I have to ssh, and then use vi over the net, which is horrible
Have you tried using sshfs and then running an editor locally? Just don't use a GUI-based file manager on the mounted filesystem (esp. the OSX Finder.) :(
Yeah, this is what I used to do. There were some problems with file managers as you said, but it worked nicely in IDEs. Nowadays I only log in to that system to submit batch jobs every now and then, so it is not a big problem anymore.
Have you tried using sshfs and then running an editor locally? Just don't use a GUI-based file manager on the mounted filesystem (esp. the OSX Finder.) :(