I like Vim for editing markdown (I write books on Leanpub, and use Deckset for my lecture presentations, so this is serious work). I'm still learning it but I enjoy learning how to customize it. My advice: google and implement one change at a time, rather than trying to add ten different features to your .vimrc all at once.

For coding Python, I prefer PyCharm from JetBrains. In time I may get Vim to do everything a real IDE does, but time is money and I can't wait.