I've used Emacs for almost 5 years now and it has served me well. In the beginning it was frustrating and confusing, but now that I understand it, it's the way I naturally interact with code on my computer. The fact that so many gnu tools have movement similar to Emacs means that I can quickly become more effective in them. The fact that my work Macbook allows me to do some rudimentary movement with C-a, C-e, C-f, C-n brings me joy.

Emacs rewards me for learning it better, and when I think about what it does, and is capable of doing, I'm just in awe. I highly recommend reading Mastering Emacs if you would like to become a more effective Emacs user.

After using it for years I can say my single biggest gripe with Emacs is its performance. Elisp is powerful but slow, and has many warts. The developments with GccEmacs excites me, and there is still GuileMacs. As a more experienced user Emacs frustrates me because at times I demand too much of it. And when that happens, I try to temper that frustration with the understanding that the program is 36 years and 5 days old to the day, and has outlived many other pieces of software. Computers looked different in 85 than they did today, and the fact that I have saved truly days of programming time due how effective it makes me cannot be overlooked.

I want Emacs to continue to improve. I want it to get even better than it already is, but I am so grateful for the people who have made it what it is today.

I prefer vim as an editor, but in terms of being a unique and fascinating piece of software, emacs wins hands down. There's something really cool about the fact that you can't easily answer the question, "What is emacs similar to?", because it's such a total sui generis.

Viper mode could give you the best of both worlds, depending on what you like about vim. If it's the key navigation, viper has you covered.

spacemacs has a very complete vim layer. By far it's the most complete implementation outside of actual vim I've seen.

Spacemacs uses “Evil mode”[1], which is available just as a regular (MELPA) package. I started with Vim and so I’ve always used evil. “Vanilla” emacs, spacemacs, now doom.

[1] https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil