Have to agree on the VCS story. I’d switched over to using Zed more or less permanently, but I eventually moved back because I kept having to open Intellij to resolve conflicts.
>>>> and <<<< and resolve them in whatever editor you need ? or do these editors do something else that helps with merge conflicts ?
I find resolving conflicts through this sort of system tends to be a lot more intuitive than trying to mess around with conflict markers - it also helps with protecting against mistakes like forgetting conflicts or wanting to undo changes. If you're not used to it, I really recommend finding a good three-way merge plugin for your editor/IDE of choice.
Emacs is my current tool of choice, and i'm way too invested to change at this point.