As every Irreal surely knows, I’m a die hard Emacs user but I was, for a long time, a Vim user and still consider it one of the two best editors. It’s long been my view that Emacs and Vim serve two different constituencies and aren’t really the same type of application. The TL;DR is that Vim is for people who want a small, fast, editor that excels at editing and doesn’t bother with anything else. Emacs, on the other hand, is for people who want a unified operating environment that—sort of—recapitulates the Lisp Machines.
Nicholas Bernstein is a committed Vi/Vim user who more or less agrees with me. Like me, he thinks that Vi/Vim and Emacs are distinct types of applications that serve different needs. He has a nice nice video that discusses this and makes the case that Emacs is all about providing a consistent interface for text based applications.
I think that that’s true but doesn’t tell the entire truth about Emacs. Yes, it does provide a consistent interface for text but it offers much more. It is, as I’ve often said, a light weight Lisp Machine that provides an integrating environment for all your computing needs. If you’re happy with a text-centric browser, Emacs can be the center of all your needs. Even if, like me, you use a standard browser for the dealing with the Web, Emacs can still provide almost everything else.
As I’ve said before, I spend almost all my time in either Emacs or Safari. I have to say, it’s a pretty nice environment. Bernstein makes the same case from the point of view of a Vi/Vim user.