Interesting, that was more the experience I had the first time I tried using Emacs as a vi user. The documentation I could find (limited, this was back in the <gasp> '80s, couldn't google it), said "You are never intended to leave Emacs, you should be able to do everything inside it." I was done with my lunch break and needed to get back to work, so I went to another X window and killed Emacs.
Oddly I have an installation of Emacs on my current ArchLinux box that doesn't shut down with `C-xC-c`.... I've had to resort to `C-z, ps ax | grep emacs` to kill the process. I haven't cared enough to fix it.
I'd like to tangent a bit and introduce you to pgrep and pkill (available in arch via `procps-ng` pkg). They are very nice for reducing the amount of grep/sed/awk magic on the output of ps.
Vim is more of a concept in human computer interaction. Most of the software in the linked page share zero LOC with vim. But they share keybindings, modalness and a general way of interacting.
Vim is a powerful idea that has many implementations.
Emacs is an environment to run emacs-lisp, a language based on another powerful idea - Lisp.
People unfamiliar with Vim philosophy often scoff: "Why do you need to control everything with h/j/k/l. Why all this modality crap?" And the answer is: Because it gives you incredible control over the text. You'd feel empowered. And text to us humans is everything, especially us: software developers, writers, etc. We live text, and we breathe text, we stare at it all day long, we type it, we manipulate it. And if there's a proven method to make it even just a bit slightly better, how stubborn and stupid one has to be not to give it a try?
People unfamiliar with Emacs often scoff: "Why do you need to run everything in Emacs?". And the answer is simple: Because it gives you incredible control over things beyond the text. Everything is connected. I can schedule my work, and I can track my time spent on it, I can take notes without leaving the context of my work. I can jump into the file manager and edit filenames like it's just text, and then submit my changes - it will do it for all the files. I can select multiple files and see the git-log of modifications to those files. I can submit my changes and update the status of the ticket in the bug-tracking system without leaving the context I'm in. When someone sends me an email, I can link that email to the item in my Org-agenda. And everything is so flexible, and even when you need to switch between projects and have to re-configure things you don't have to restart things, you don't have to change the context, you stay "in the zone." You'd feel empowered.
People often debate what's better Vim or Emacs, often without even having the slightest understanding of what each of them has to offer.