The most typical use is for me to abuse the heck out of command-d. This will select the current word (if none selected) and then each subsequent press of this command adds the next occurrence of the selected text to the selection. I also like the ability to use option-drag down a column for block selection when I have text from some source that needs a bit of munging on each line.
The thing I don't get about Cmd+D is, what do you do when you get to an occurrence you don't want to include in your selection? There doesn't appear to be any "skip" shortcut -- is there?
I always prefer nice Replace All commands where you can see a condensed overview of all occurrences and then uncheck things you want to exclude. When Brackets added that it made me very happy :-)
Thanks much for that link. I'll check it out.