[craigsmansion]

CS student? Yes, without reservations. And any other student probably as well.

Emacs is not a program just for coding. It can be used for anything that can be expressed in a text oriented way: writing a book, a thesis, an email, etc. And most editing commands work in exactly the same way in those contexts.

> if the investment is worth the cost

As you said: 15+ years. And that's not really any sort of exception in the emacs world. Of all the software in existence, I'd say emacs is one of the most likely not to stop development in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone alive today (and I'm not even talking about being able to maintain it yourself if push comes to shove).

So for anyone serious about writing anything at all, emacs is never a bad recommendation.