Back in the 90's, "pico" was always the go-to editor for those who didn't want to mess around with emacs or vi.

Jove was the big editor on campus at the University of Rochester back in the very early 90's, mostly because Jonathan Payne, who wrote it, attended the school. When I got there I pushed for Joe adoption because it was a simpler editor for the less geeky undergraduate users to use. Pico never really was a phenomenon there at the time.