For a considerable time in my professional life I was forced to use Windows. I would still have access to Linux VMs, in which I spent most of my time, using vim as the editor but whenever I wanted to take quick notes, sanitize text, stash away some info I need in work etc., I'd just use the notepad on Windows.

Then I found Notepad++. The UX is just so great (though I never figured out how to delete all the line ending spaces and it's sometimes nagging me).

So I love both Vim and Notepad++, different use cases. Different reasons.

geany, codeblocks, and np++ are all scintilla, so what I am really saying is I use both "something like vim or emacs" AND scintilla, and there is no dichotomy.

And what is "something like vim or emacs"? The two are nothing like each other.

Anyone who used either vim or emacs already knows why they do so, and already knows that none of the reasons anyone will say they like any normal editor will apply. Everything anyone says will either be something vim or emacs already has their own answer for, or will be things they actively don't want.

Question seems somewhere between disingenuous to inexplicable. I would say rather than an actual request for information, it was just to say "I like vim or emacs", except "I like vim or emacs" makes no sense because they are not substitutions for each other.

You don't need to worry about modes or plugins for language syntax highlighting for most file types as it's built in.