I am probably in a tiny minority but I wish that Emacs had won the "most popular editor"¹ instead of M$ VsCode
¹ I did read that VsCode is the biggest now but I havent really looked into to it to verify that statement.
Emacs is ~40 years old now, it's lost many popular-votes through its lifetime. VS Code is just the latest in a long list of popular editors. It also lost to the vi-family, to IDEs, to notepad++, to sublime and probably some others. Emacs is not meant to win, and that's ok, because that what makes it great, is also what makes it losing in popularity with the crowd.
Some language communities can get by with a minuscule percentage of total users. 4% of all developers for example is a sizable amount. I think Emacs is in a pretty good sweet spot.
VSCode - 73%, Vim - 21%, Emacs - 4%.
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-integrated...
There are always some that differ more than others. I really wonder what the "polyexistential libre/halal" thing is. I remember there once was a talk on how to generalize the different vim-like "modes", instead of just insert/normal he was zooming in and out of various levels of modes; unfortunately I can't find that talk again, does anyone remember what it was called?
(I did find https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/nangulator/ with the audience comment "This is weirdware in the best sort of way")
