If I leapfrog over my generally cold attitude towards Lisp-like languages and my habit of Vim keys, the main problem is Emacs's sluggishness, even if it is natively compiled. Neovim fully packed with plugins, LSPs, settings and etc without lazy loading (!) is so much faster.
And? GIMP is too, much faster to start than Photoshop, yet there are a number of things for which sometimes you just need the heavy cavalry.
I was doing some API testing today, I pressed a key, then a snippet expansion system added something like this into my notes:
#+begin_src http
GET http://localhost:5003/api/health
#+end_src
I ran the snippet, it sent the request and it failed.
I realized that I needed a token. It is stored in an env var - not very secure, but it's okay - I'm not testing the prod endpoint. I just had to change the header into this:
I ran that, and Emacs picked up the env-var, fed that into the snippet, sent http request, got me some results. Then, I changed the endpoint to get some more data, I realized that I would like to examine it closer. I could've done this in Python, Javascript, any other language, even Elisp, but I know Clojure, it's good for data manipulation - so I chose that. I just had to feed the http request results to another block in Clojure. I spun up a Clojure REPL, went through the data, looked at the results, typed some Clojure data manipulation functions, right there where my notes were, ran them against the data, added some more notes - documenting my findings.
I've tested some more endpoints, got some unfamiliar http error codes, so I just typed directly in my notes "RFC 2616", Emacs was smart enough to recognize what that was and it opened the RFC document, where I searched for the error code, read about it, refreshing my knowledge.
Then I found the Jira ticket number in my yesterday's notes, copied over to my notes of today - Org-mode has a nice way of organizing daily notes in so-called date-trees. It's just a plain string - "TDL-26478", and once again, Emacs was smart enough to know what that was, I was able to read the description of the Jira ticket, without switching to the browser, without opening any pages, right there, from where I was composing my notes.
And this is all within less than an hour. I was able to send http requests, analyze results, study relevant RFC document, work with Jira, all that while taking extensive notes, without opening a single web-page, without typing a single command in the terminal, all that done inside Emacs. Emacs basically within less than an hour in a single window was able to substitute for me - a note taking app like Obsidian or Notion; API client like Postman; Interactive computing platform like Jupyter; Project management client for Jira; RFC documentation site; Web-browser and the Terminal app. So tell, me which one of any of these activities do you normally do in Neovim? And btw, this is not even remotely "esoteric" stuff I do in Emacs. This is just an ordinary Tuesday for me.
Don't get me wrong, I do get and appreciate the "complete package" and "customize everything" approaches followed by Emacs, but Emacs is often not the best tool for the job, if you work in a team. You've mentioned Jupyter notebooks and project management. Yes, Org and interactive modes are excellent, well-polished, full of goodies. The problem is that features like these require other people to either do the same as you do or to be able to integrate via an API/protocol. Having lots of people being fond of Emacs is a bit of a stretch, while integration features rely a lot on the community, which, as I've already said, isn't that wide, so plugins aren't always well maintained, unless you do it yourself, of course... And as a editor with LSP (a built-in) Neovim is simply put extremely responsive, I'd say it's closer to Unix philosophy of having a single thing doing its job really well.
You're missing the crux of the matter. It's not about comparing the quality of two distinct tools. It's erroneous to claim that a power drill is inherently superior to an oscillating spindle sander - these are tools from different categories, each excelling in its intended purpose. Certainly, tools can sometimes be repurposed for tasks they weren't designed for, and occasionally this leads to the creation of a more suitable tool, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I use both Vim and Emacs daily, and while your observation about Emacs generally being slower than Vim isn't incorrect, it doesn't necessarily make Vim a better all-purpose tool for everything. Emacs isn't either, for certain things, Vim is indeed excellent.
I suggest you reconsider your perspective on Emacs users as mere dorks who misunderstand Vim or are too lazy to learn it. Instead, explore their motivations, question your own "cold attitude towards Lisp-like languages" - "know thy enemy", if you will. You might uncover some surprising insights. Trust me on this, from one die-hard Vimmer to another: it's never "Vim vs. Emacs for everything", it's rather "Vim or Emacs for the task at hand".
I don't hate on Emacs in general, even more so I'm quite happy to learn about it's features and great plugins, but that'd mean a decent time investment. From my side, I'm generally a slow learner too, it took me a few years to be productive in Vim/Neovim, configuring it to my liking, polishing the motions. Maybe if I get some more free time with the new job, I'll finally go about making my Emacs config work well.
