Over at the Emacs subreddit, Sahkopi4 recounts his journey from Vim to Emacs. Actually, his journey was from Nano to Emacs by way of Vim. When he first started using Linux, Nano was the default editor and he began with that. Eventually he wanted more power and because Vim seemed more popular in the forums he inhabited, he learned Vim. He really like it and the power that it brought him was an eyeopener.
He experimented with other Vim-like implementations but they didn’t work for him so he stuck with Vim. Eventually he tried Emacs and almost immediately became a convert. Like me, he jumped right in and didn’t try to use Evil or some other Vim emulation. Like many of us, he loved the experience and now wants to do as much as he can in Emacs.
As always, a lot of the action is in the comments. Many said that immigrants from Vim should use Evil because it gives you the best of both worlds: the modal, composable editing commands of Vim and the power and flexibility of Emacs. Others said that Evil induces a sort of cognitive dissonance where neither system is fully in control.
There is, of course, the occasional post proclaiming loudly that Emacs is no good because it uses Lisp with all those parentheses. The ankle biting aside, the comments offer an intelligent and useful commentary on Sahkopi4’s journey.