[mystifyingpoi]

I think it is cultural. It's kinda like building your own lightsaber as a Jedi. The part of Emacs/Vim initiation is building your own configuration that works for you. Setting up plugins, keybindings, colorschemes etc. It's part of the fun of it (at least for me).

[noufalibrahim]

Oh yes. What other software allows you so much to make it your own? Yes, I know the yak shaving argument etc. But what's the fun in opening up some computer/OS/software that looks and feels exactly like everyone elses? An Emacs (and vim) setup is something you can actually have a discussion about with someone else.

[tmtvl]

KDE, various window managers (i3, awesome, xmonad,...), the Linux kernel (there's so much stuff you can configure through sysctl alone, and that's just 1 single customization facility), SystemD, your shell (whether it be bash, zsh, csh, ksh, or something else), and the list goes on.

[cyberpunk]

And then slowly over 20 or so years deleting all of it.

I think I'm down to about 110 lines of ~/.vimrc now :}

[wtetzner]

But without building it all up and then slowly deleting it, you wouldn't have known which 110 lines were the ones to keep ;)