Regardless emacs can take long to boot up (unless you invoke it with -Q) but nano is instant. So when I need to change one line of a file real quick, nano is the better tool imho.
I launch Emacs when I log in just after booting. It restores its desktop (all the frames and buffers) and I never close it. Even though it has to restore a couple of dozen buffers and nearly that many frames it takes only a few seconds anyway.
As I am in Emacs anyway opening a file is very fast unless it's a really large file, multiple giga bytes.
Why would anyone close Emacs? Do you close the web browser too? What about X Windows?
Even without a server, modern Emacs can load quite swiftly by making use of deferred loading on demand. I stopped using an Emacs server some time ago because it loads fast enough, now.
Setting up emacs server pretty much solves this problem as each subsequent launch uses the same running daemon. After that you just set up an alias that launches emacsclient like the following:
Unfortunately, I don't expect to have emacs server running in an EC2 instance intended to run a company service since it needs to be a copy of prod instance (for testing/development). In such instances nano is helpful.
As I am in Emacs anyway opening a file is very fast unless it's a really large file, multiple giga bytes.
Why would anyone close Emacs? Do you close the web browser too? What about X Windows?