Vim is my text editor of choice. It’s incredibly flexible, extensible, and configurable.  I’ve used it for everything from note taking to programming to writing email, and it has never let me down.  The learning curve is not as steep as one might think, but it does take a little time to get used to the modal editing environment.  That investment quickly yields dividends, though, as regular text editing tasks become faster and, in many cases, more satisfying.

A number of features set Vim ahead of other editors:

• It is available for a wide array of platforms, and it’s very often installed by default.
• It runs fast and has a small memory footprint.
• It can be scripted using its native macro language or fully-features languages like Python or Perl.