I just want a decent open source native editor with a native GUI.

10+ years ago, when I and almost everyone I knew were on Windows or Linux, this was simple and ubiquitous. UltraEdit, Notepad++, Vim and Emacs of course, etc, there were dozens of options to choose from.

Then I and most developers that I know switched to Macs, and now this is an alien concept. There's a dearth of open source Mac development, and much of what exists uses Electron or some other crutch to avoid committing to the Mac platform.

I've tried Neovim, but the "GUI" version is basically just the console version in a window. Might as well just skip it and do everything from the terminal.

There is MacVim, but you have to open it from the command-line in order for it to scan your home directory properly. If you pin it to your dock and launch from there, then it doesn't know who you are and launches in stock vanilla mode without reading your .vimrc. Same problem with Geany. I could PROBABLY figure out how to modify the dock icon to launch with the right flags, but the point is that this is unreasonably complex and arcane for most users.

So... I just stumble along with VS Code by default, like most people these days. It's an odd shame that cross-platform desktop app development is as dead as it is, especially considering that most devs today are not using the dominant platform anymore.