Well, I'm usually using gvim (the Gtk+/GUI version of the Vim programmer’s editor) for coding and for writing purely-Latin texts. For bidirectional (mixed Hebrew+Latin / etc.) texts, I sometimes use Kate instead, with a fallback on gedit. Sometimes, I use Vim (the console version) for quick edits or when I cannot or would prefer not to use a GUI editor.

The reason I am using gvim instead of vim, is because many terminal emulators on Linux (including Konsole which is my preferred one) mess up with the Hebrew/Latin bidirectionality too much (enough to confuse vim), because the syntax highlighting looks nicer there, because the mouse support is better, and because it does not start much slower than Vim. If the console-based Vim works for you, feel free to use it.

Regarding Emacs: from what I know, it should be a fine text editor, but I could never get used to it, so that’s not what I’m using. I was told about the Evil mode which provides partial Vim compatibility, but I didn’t try it, in part because I’m now using quite a lot of Vim extensions written in vimscript and in Vim’s extension languages, which are not supported by Evil.