Have you used SublimeText?

You are phrasing this as if popularity was linked with quality, or that popularity should be prioritised over performance. Nobody will stop you from using the most popular editor, if that's what's important to you.

I on the other hand prefer programs that don't occasionally give me upwards of one second of input delay when handling input is basically 50% of their whole functionality.

Sounds like why I use sublime instead of $POPULAR.

The most popular text editor today (vscode) also isn't written in Java. And if it had been, it might not have become the most popular as it benefits greatly from communities around web technologies like JS.

Also one of the reason people use Sublime is because it's just so fast. It might not be the most popular editor currently, but if it weren't performing so great, it sure wouldn't be as popular as it is.