Most experienced Emacsers recognize the futility of proselytizing for our favorite editor. Basically, no one but the already convinced want to hear about it. They’re sure the bling, menus, and mouse actions offered by those other editors are superior to an editor that’s older than most of them. But they lack something we have: experience with both their chosen editor and Emacs.
My own proselytizing is mostly confined to Irreal. I very rarely try to convince people one-on-one anymore. Of course, Irreal readers are mostly Emacs users so I’m largely preaching to the choir. Still, we do what we can do.
Gene Goykhman over at Flaky Goodness has a similar story. One thing I liked about his post is that he quotes Prot on the compounding benefits of learning Emacs. Yes, there is a learning curve and it’s (relatively) difficult for beginners to get going but before too long the compounding sets in and, as Prot says, we start to get more out of studying Emacs than we put in.
Of course, we can’t tell anyone this because they don’t want to hear it.