When you finally learn to master and config Emacs, you run circles around all other editors. Emacs is so much more than just an editor. But even if you only use it for coding: Magit is the best git client I have used in years (coming from PyCharm + Git Tower App, which is nice), then thereā€˜s Ztree-Diff (excellent folder diff tool; previously using Kaleidoscope app), then Eshell for interacting with the server from within Emacs (programmatically if you like), Tramp for remote editing, excellent integration of ripgrep and silversearcher (ag) into Emacs for code navigation, yasnippet as an excellent templates/snippet manager, and many more packages.

What makes Emacs exceptional is you can link all these packages together, create your own workflows by scripting Emacs in Lisp. And I write the docu in Emacs in org-mode, with org-babel I can run shell-scripts / python-scripts and other code in my org-file and see the output underneath it (like Jupyter notebooks), link to code fragments in my org files etc

I manage several projects with it and switch contexts with one key-combination: Vagrant box is started, project folder is changed, necessary files opened, ready to hack, build, deploy, do server restarts with a single key stroke.

I think VS Code is a nice coding environment with good defaults and many things done right (compare installing packages in VS Code to Sublime! What an improvement) but nowhere near the capabilities and the productivity of Emacs.

Compared to many I am a relatively new emacs user, back when I began programming I let myself get intimidated by the scary stories told about Emacs and Vim configuration. Turns out a huge emacs configuration is not needed, in fact I notice my emacs config actually started to become smaller over the recent times. It's hard to express how much I value emacs now and the only regret I have is that I did not give it a chance earlier when I still exclusively used "modern" editors and IDEs.

Another aspect I see rarely mentioned is the emacs evil[1], it basicelly provides a full vi layer, it's much more than your average "vi keybindings" plugin. Emacs vs Vim? Not a question I have to give any thought when I can use both and switch between them without much effort.

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