I'm looking for a text editor for those times where I don't want to have to open Visual Studio to make a small change. What I'm looking for:

1. Fast - it doesn't have to be instant, and a few seconds load time is perfectly okay, but general operation shouldn't feel sluggish.

2. Extensible - I want to be able to write scripts or macros or something for it. If I can't compile from within it, I want to be able to write a plugin to do so.

3. Some kind of block editing, whether through VS-style alt-drag or Sublime multiple cursors or whatever. This is one of those things I really notice when I don't have.

4. "windowsy" interface - this means ctrl/alt/shift based shortcuts, gui mouse support.

4 is my "anti-vim" clause; I've nothing against vim and passably know how to use it, but I really don't enjoy working in that kind of UI. I'm not really interested in discussing vim beyond that because I want to avoid an editor war.

I used to use Sublime back in the day, but I've been hearing that it's starting to go through bit-rot and doesn't always work on newer Linux distros as a result. It's also been long enough that I remember nothing about the shortcuts at this point and so have no real attachment to it. I've heard about Atom, and while it seems cool, it's also apparently slow and seems very tailored toward Javascript development (which I care nothing about -- I'm a systems guy).

Any thoughts? Is the sublime rot overblown? Is atom not really noticeably slow? Is there some other awesome editor?

Not sure if its what you need, https://code.visualstudio.com/

I use it for quick shader editing, it has highlighting and extensions, not sure about heavy plugins

Personally, I've never seen a need for anything in between a simple text editor like Notepad++, and a full blown IDE like eclipse. However I did once try to research different editors. Out of what I considered, it seems Geany may be the kind of thing you're looking for.

You can write plugins and such for Notepad++, and it uses Scintilla for syntax highlighting last I checked.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I still have no idea what I'm going to use, but this gives me stuff to look at.

Notepad++, no doubt.

If you seek an ide for web development, web storm is a good one.

I've been a big fan of Sublime Text for a long time. It's a very capable editor, has robust plugin support, and really isn't all that expensive when you consider just how much time you spend in a text editor.