Tramp is terrible. Sshfs is better. I don't think it's hard to think of situations where those options aren't as practical as popping open an editor on the command line that you're on.
In my experience it highly depends on the editor. With Sublime Text 3 on OS X, each keystroke is delayed by SSHFS' latency. It's a pain.
Tramp transfers the files back and forth, always working on a local copy (if I remember correctly). It provides a better experience.