The other day I came across an old post by Vivek Haldar on what we want in an editor. I may have written about it before but it’s worth revisiting. He notes that for many people what they want includes “looks nice” but that’s crazy. “Good looking” for an editor means the font is readable, renders at a comfortable size, and the syntax highlighting makes sense. Anything else is irrelevant.
He makes a couple of other points worth mentioning. People often say that they have to use an editor for a while so they can adjust to it. Haldar says that’s backwards. Your editor should adjust to you, not the other way around.
Finally he says that editors are like fine wine: the older the better. If you want a good editor, choose one that’s been around long enough that all the quirks have been worked out and that every conceivable way of manipulating text has been considered and reified into workable code.