Joshua Blais has a nice video that recounts an apostate’s repentance. Blais was an Emacs user but moved to Neovim. Users always seem to be switching back and forth between Emacs and Vim. They are, after all, the only two serious editors.
The point of this post, however, is not to gloat but to tell the story of Blais’ return to the fold and the reasons for it. The TL;DR is that Emacs provides a total operating environment. That it is, in fact, a Lisp Machine.
He examines in depth the frequent complaint that Emacs has a long learning curve and points out that the comparison is unfair because the learning curve of Vim, say, doesn’t include having to learn all the other applications you need. One of the strengths of Emacs is that it presents a uniform interface across all its applications. One you learn it, there’s little effort involved in learning another Emacs app.
In the Emacs subreddit, Karthink, who has more than earned our respect, makes a bit of fun of Blais for his apostasy but I’m willing to take him at his word. There’s a lot to be said for Vi and its siblings and for some users it’s the right choice. But if you want a total operating environment with a uniform interface, then Emacs is probably the right choice for you.
The video is 20 minutes, 54 seconds so plan accordingly but if you are undecided about which editor to use, it’s worthwhile spending a few minutes with his video.