Have you tried vim? When I say tried, attempted to actually get into it. Not accidentally open it && stack overflow how to quit. You can easily do what you mention in vim... and I have no doubt, much quicker. Let's not forget vim gives you the power of cli, in addition to all it's other text manipulation benefits.
Which is the OPs exact point. While some people value their editor being very light on ram, other people value other things, and that's okay.