I've used emacs for 25 years, and I kinda agree, actually.
What keeps me using it is precisely that it's been stable that long. Given that I don't really need that many features, it's been nice to not have to change editors, what, 5 or 6 times in that period of time?
I've got some very light customization to expose the macro features more conveniently, and like three or four keybindings for my major languages I work in.
Other than that, part of what keeps me in emacs is that it supports SSH'ing to remote systems to edit things very well, so I can use my desktop editor in all kinds of environments with everything I'm used to, no matter where I'm having to edit something, as long as SSH can get to it. While there are other editors that can do this to some extent, I find that when it's nominally "time" to switch to New Editor of the Half-Decade it's often a missing or poorly-implemented feature.
Also, as strange as it may seem, a lot of editors aren't all that great at editing 5 files at a time. They certainly can, but they're not that great at it. Emacs is pretty good. I don't even use any funky extensions for it.
I still don't really know elisp. I've seen emacs wizards, and I'm not one, despite 25 years with it. Given that editor features aren't really that important, why not pick one decent tool and stick with it? At least then I'm not surprised when I have to pick up a new tool and, oh, crap, it doesn't do networks, and, tabs, seriously, tabs for multiple buffers with no keyboard access based on names? No.
(I do also know enough vi to get around in it when I have to use it on some system for some reason.)
What keeps me using it is precisely that it's been stable that long. Given that I don't really need that many features, it's been nice to not have to change editors, what, 5 or 6 times in that period of time?
I've got some very light customization to expose the macro features more conveniently, and like three or four keybindings for my major languages I work in.
Other than that, part of what keeps me in emacs is that it supports SSH'ing to remote systems to edit things very well, so I can use my desktop editor in all kinds of environments with everything I'm used to, no matter where I'm having to edit something, as long as SSH can get to it. While there are other editors that can do this to some extent, I find that when it's nominally "time" to switch to New Editor of the Half-Decade it's often a missing or poorly-implemented feature.
Also, as strange as it may seem, a lot of editors aren't all that great at editing 5 files at a time. They certainly can, but they're not that great at it. Emacs is pretty good. I don't even use any funky extensions for it.
I still don't really know elisp. I've seen emacs wizards, and I'm not one, despite 25 years with it. Given that editor features aren't really that important, why not pick one decent tool and stick with it? At least then I'm not surprised when I have to pick up a new tool and, oh, crap, it doesn't do networks, and, tabs, seriously, tabs for multiple buffers with no keyboard access based on names? No.
(I do also know enough vi to get around in it when I have to use it on some system for some reason.)