I've been a pico/pine user for almost 20 years and on OSX ST2 has been my editor of choice for the past couple. I decided just this past week to force myself into getting to know vim better because I hear how powerful it is.
Once you get a decent .vimrc going, it can be configured to be as good/better than ST2. Its free. Its cross platform. Its easily usable over SSH.
So at least for me, vim > st2/st3.
However, that's just my experience. I'd suggest he try a clean vim and add plugins as he needs them. There are plenty of links suggesting great plugins for developers. "sjl" (steve losh) has an article which was linked here (Coming Home to Vim) that mentions some good plugins.
I'm sure it has it's problems, but you can easily remove all of the included bundles. I think at the very least it provides a well structured foundation to built upon.
I've been studying other's .vimrc files in an effort to understand what all vim vanilla is capable of. Once I get that dialed in, I'll look into plugins for my local box; I just want to make sure that I can use it effectively just by firing up any new VM.
Also, I'm being sacrilegious and setting myself up for primarily --INSERT-- mode, since its the most like a GUI text editor. Its making the barrier of entry slightly more endurable!
inoremap <Up> <NOP>
inoremap <Down> <NOP>
inoremap <Left> <NOP>
inoremap <Right> <NOP>
noremap <Up> <NOP>
noremap <Down> <NOP>
noremap <Left> <NOP>
noremap <Right> <NOP>
And when I finish installing all the plugins, I can't claim that my vim works everywhere.