[squishington]

Yes! I found Emacs on a 1997 CD ROM inside a book about VHDL "functional bus models" in my university library in 2014. Over the years it has become an extension of my body. There's always something new coming along in terms of performance and functionality. My co-workers have never been inspired to explore it. Most people think it is a relic.

[sureglymop]

I find it interesting because they probably unknowingly could already control emacs quite well. The gnu readline key bindings are pretty much the same as the emacs ones and are universally used in text editing environments and REPLs. For example in html text inputs or in all text editing contexts on macOS.

They were the first thing I missed when first trying out insert mode in vim. I also think the concept of major and minor modes is overall simpler and easier to understand than how this works in e.g. neovim.

However I still prefer neovim because I believe lua to be overall nicer to use. Nothing against lisp and I understand it is incredibly simple and powerful. But I feel most people just want to have an easy way to configure their editor and imo the developer ergonomics for lua are better. Especially also with formatting, typing and other tooling. Nested lua tables look almost exactly like json, while the same structure in elisp would probably confuse someone switching over from vs code.

[squishington]

Admittedly I struggle with emacs out of the box. My emacs configuration has evolved over the years. It's a personal thing. I couldn't tell you about my key bindings. My hands just know them instinctively. That's what I love about it. You can craft it to your personal needs. I map ctrl key to spacebar (only when spacebar is held down), and meta to return key (when held down). No more RSI for me.