> I won't use Emacs because I want a smart editor or IDE, not an editor construction toolkit. I have no interest in micro-optimizing my editor.
Pretty much all "smart editors or IDEs" that are available are editor construction toolkits bundled with add-ons which make completed editors using the toolkit for a variety of special purposes, and with an ecosystem (first party and/or community) of additional add-ons available. Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, IntelliJ and its various cousins, etc., all fit the model.
Emacs fits in with the rest in this regard (in fact, its one of the earliest inspirational models for what the field has become, probably the earliest example of the now-dominant model that is still actively maintained and widely used.)
To be honest, when you install Visual Studio or IntelliJ, you have all you need to develop code in the language you chose, with 0 extra customization. Of course, some amount of extra customization will usually follow, but that can come after you are more confident with the environment.
The same is definitely not true for VSCode, Emacs or vim, though perhaps bundles like portacle can offer a similar experience. I say this as an Emacs & IntelliJ user.
The difference between Emacs and those other tools is that some other people already used the tools to build things for me. With Emacs I have to build it myself, 90% of the time.
It's cool, it's interesting, it's tinkering and I don't want to do it :-)
until very recently emacs was the only editor that felt "smart". visual studio didn't really recognized grammar the same way. emacs semi parsing meant that TAB was a way to syntax check my code on the fly (50% of why I kept using emacs in college)
Pretty much all "smart editors or IDEs" that are available are editor construction toolkits bundled with add-ons which make completed editors using the toolkit for a variety of special purposes, and with an ecosystem (first party and/or community) of additional add-ons available. Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, IntelliJ and its various cousins, etc., all fit the model.
Emacs fits in with the rest in this regard (in fact, its one of the earliest inspirational models for what the field has become, probably the earliest example of the now-dominant model that is still actively maintained and widely used.)