What If You Don't Use Emacs or Vi?

If you do not use Vi or Emacs, you are not alone. Choosing a text editor often boils down to trial-and-error. If you try one and do not get on well with it, try another. For the sake of your purse, it is best to do this with free editors (of which there are thousands).

Many programmers learn the editor used by their team. For some, it is Eclipse, or TextPad, or Kate, or GEdit, or BBEdit, or another multi-language editor. For others it is language-specific: IDLE, Visual C++, or similar tools. You can get an overview of what is available in both regards in the editor review. While the editor you use may not be important in the short term (as long as the resulting code does what it should!), it is best practice to choose an editor and stick with it. To quote The Pragmatic Programmer:

The editor should be an extension of your hand: make sure your editor is configurable, extensible, and programmable.

It is difficult to write code efficiently when you are using different keybindings, layouts, and functions for every task you do. Therefore, with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, one can use those criteria when choosing an editor for every task. If you cannot configure the editor, it will inevitably fight you when you stop thinking the way the developers intended. If you cannot extend it, you will reduce your efficiency as you increase the number of tools you need to use in order to accomplish something. If you cannot program it, you cannot build on it, and you will again limit yourself to the imagination of the editor's designer.