But jokes aside, use whatever environment you like best. For me syntax highlighting is extremely useful. Knowing whether some strings of characters is a type or a variable, or a class type or a basic type makes programming just that much easier. It also helps catching simple typos if something doesn't have the color you'd expect.
By the way, 'em' stands for 'editor for mortals' - I
christened it that after Ken Thompson visited our lab at
QMC while I was developing it and said something like:
"yeah, I've seen editors like that, but I don't feel a need
for them, I don't want to see the state of the file when
I'm editing".
I've always preferred nvi over vim because:
1) there's no lag when I scroll up or down through a file line-by-line,
2) it shows a list of matching files by default when using tab completion in command mode (same as bash), vs picking the first matching filename, and
3) it uses fewer resources when you screw up (http://galexander.org/vim_sucks.html)
I used to think that the lack of syntax highlighting was its biggest weakness, but now that's apparently a virtue :-) .
set wildmode=list:longest
I just tried the benchmark from the article that you linked ("1000000aaeou<ESC>"), and it really did not complete in a useful timeframe. However, when I insert the text once, yank it, then paste it with repeat ("iaeou<ESC>^y4l1000000p"), the operation completes instantly, and I can still browse the file without any slowdown. Undo/redo across this operation seems to take some seconds, though.