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Most cases where you'd need multi-selection you can likely use Refactor in an IntelliJ IDE.

I just created a model from a table with over 20 columns. A few days ago I had to hardcode a list of settings I screenscraped into a JS array in the Chrome console. You can't refactor things like that.

For those sorts of things I think it's completely reasonable to drop into emacs, vim or sublime and then just copy paste back into your primary IDE.

When it's a text editing operation that you're trying to do (as opposed to a defined transformation on valid source) then it makes sense to use a text editor.

I keep emacs and intellij open usually.

You should.

But there is also column selection mode.

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