I think Feynman would have loved excalidraw. I find it very difficult to sort my thinking in a text editor, even though I find the mechanical process of writing is much better there.
I'd say there's still quite some room left here for authoring tools, but excalidraw + vim is the best I have atm.
Thank you for mentioning excalidraw. That's pretty tempting at $6/mo if paid yearly -- yeah, I know I can use it for free. To be able to produce a quick sketch on any computer, anywhere, and quickly share it is pretty nifty. I'm kind of astounded by what people do in browsers nowadays. Even more surprised that those things are so often no longer clunky in the slightest.
And vim? Yeah. Wouldn't want to live without it, though I'm not going to argue it's better than any other capable editor. It's okay to like something just because, right?
I'd say there's still quite some room left here for authoring tools, but excalidraw + vim is the best I have atm.