I've not found it helpful; I work in bursts, and need to let some steam go from time to time. Having nothing to quickly distract me from the problem at hand for a few seconds is distracting in a counterproductive (and slightly annoying way).

The usefulness depends on your style of work. If you find yourself stopping your work unnecessarily because chat windows pop up or so, you're better of closing the chat programs instead of working full screen; changing the work environment slows down your work until you get used to it.

Also, using those editors you mentioned would slow down some quick editing (at least I'm prone to using different fonts, bolds, italics, superscript (like this), among other things, and those are usually absent in full screen text editors.

As I said, it depends on the way you work. The only way to find out if it works for you is trying it for at least a week.

I've not found it helpful; I work in bursts, and need to let some steam go from time to time. Having nothing to quickly distract me from the problem at hand for a few seconds is distracting in a counterproductive (and slightly annoying way).

The usefulness depends on your style of work. If you find yourself stopping your work unnecessarily because chat windows pop up or so, you're better of closing the chat programs instead of working full screen; changing the work environment slows down your work until you get used to it.

Also, using those editors you mentioned would slow down some quick editing (at least I'm prone to using different fonts, bolds, italics, superscript (like this), among other things, and those are usually absent in full screen text editors.

As I said, it depends on the way you work. The only way to find out if it works for you is trying it for at least a week.