> It’s not very fast, but it’s surprisingly easy on the resources, especially memory.

Open VS Code and then Sublime and be amazed.

Atom and VS Code can never be 'easy on the memory' because they have to load an entire Electron instance just to idle.

Scala with Emacs + Ensime

If you tell me your beef with Netbeans I might be able to help.

I have significant experience with all big Java IDEs, 3 months full time with Visual Studio (in addition to testing it on and off for years). Use Sublime regularily. Can use vim productivily for server config. Have used emacs enough to get a taste of it.

But lately I find myself getting back to NetBeans whenever possible, not because of price but because of features, sensible defaults and stability.

> I know Vim is what I should use for "lean" but it's not easy to use.

It's easy to use, but it's not easy to learn.

There are plenty of "mid-range" editors and IDEs: mousepad, gedit, geany, kate..

Vim is well known for its bloated, messy codebase. I'd hardly call it "lean".

s/Vim/EMACS/ and you're correct. Unless you want to learn Vi, Vim is not what you want; rather EMACS is what you want, and I will agree wholeheartedly that it is "not easy to use."

I always recommend Kate to people who want a programmer's editor but don't want to deal with the esotericness of Vim.

(I personally alternate between both Kate and Vim, depending on whether I'm in more of a GUI or a CLI mood)