Emacs is an extremely esoteric program, from shortcuts, to documentation, to package management (should you use elpa? melpa? melpa-unstable), to configuration (I love Lisp, but it's much more esoteric than JSON), to bugs (who has regular UI locking as an expected part of the experience, e.g. when using eglot, in 2024?).
I love emacs, and tinkering with it, and will probably never stop using it. That doesn't mean it's a real option for someone who doesn't want to make it a hobby.
I sort of get the other points, but I really don't get this at all. How is Emacs documentation esoteric? Emacs is without a doubt the best-documented application I've ever used. I can't think of a single thing with documentation as comprehensive, accessible, navigable, interactive, searchable, or genre-spanning as Emacs' documentation.
Emacs' documentation is so far from assuming that you already know how Emacs works that it'll literally teach you not only how to use the available configuration options for its built-ins (and any external packages you choose to install) or the language used to set them, or even how to write code in that language, but what computer programs even are.
Someone with zero programming knowledge whatsoever could sit down at a computer with no internet connection, open Emacs and its manuals, and learn everything they need to use, understand, and modify Emacs all the way to the point of contributing their own Elisp code to popular packages or Emacs itself. All that without reference to a single external document or a minute of personal instruction. Emacs documentation covers everything from how to change your colorscheme to what a loop is. How is that 'esoteric'?
1. I don't really want to bother with a DSL for configuring my editor (even if the language is usable outside of that context for other things)
2. I don't have time to bother with maintaining extensive configuration to get the level of code completion/refactoring/etc that I expect from a modern IDE (nor do I want to have to stop what I'm trying to work on to debug a problem with my config)
3. I don't want to have to research various plugins and stuff to provide functionality that I get out of the box with VS Code (or other editors)
4. I don't want to have a bespoke environment that only I understand when I'm trying to collaborate with my teammates
Don't get me wrong: I think digging into emacs and/or (neo)vim is a valuable thing to do and that everybody probably *should* do it at some point (even if only as an academic exercise), but to assert that they are a viable path for everyone is ignoring the reality that some people simply aren't interested in investing that time/effort into getting their tools working.
One can argue whether or not that stance is a good one or not, but you're just debating personal preferences and priorities at that point.
