I would use VIM, personally. It may take some getting used to, but once you get it, it can be very useful. (VIM does have syntax highlighting, by the way)

Using FreeBSD for desktop is a good experience. If you are a web developer, it has everything you need. It is very stable. (only crashed when I first used it, due to outdated graphics drivers at the time?)

It also suspends properly on my computer. It is a PC from 2014, and it runs pretty fast. (This is a computer that Windows 10 runs horrific on due to spinny drive).

I would say most Linux programs are supported through binary compatibility. I don’t generally use Wine (Windows emulator), however it is supported.

FreeBSD has most of the programs that I would use on Linux, natively on their repos. However, they may be out of date compared with something like Arch. Also, using the terminal is almost the same as on Linux.

Overall, I have had a good experience. Setup is easy, however, it does require a bit of reading, and it is a manual setup (which I think is a good thing). It is not quite like Arch though, so don’t worry ;)