Best editor?

[ChinStrap]

When not using the interactive prompt, what are you using? I keep
hearing everyone say Emacs, but I can't understand it at all. I keep
trying to learn and understand why so many seem to like it because I
can't understand customization even without going through a hundred
menus that might contain the thing I am looking for (or I could go
learn another language just to customize!).

Personally I like SciTE, it has everything I think a midweight editor
should: code folding, proper python support, nice colors out of the
box, hotkey access to compile (I'm sure emacs does this, but I couldn't
figure out for the life of me how), etc.

Opinions on what the best is? Or reading I could get to maybe sway me
to Emacs (which has the major advantage of being on everyone's system).