Just to provide a counter example... I've been a long-time (13 years or so) Emacs user, and some 3 or 4 years ago, I switched to modal editing using Evil. I find it simply simpler and more efficient than traditional Emacs bindings. I actually started using vim more often after that, too.
I use Evil to get modal editing, and have spent countless hours configuring Emacs to be as vim-like as possible. As a result I can easily switch between vim and Emacs and feel completely comfortable editing in both.
The thing that would get me to use Emacs is a plugin implementing Neovim's remote editing protocol. Vim is an incredibly deep state machine, and no plugins that reimplement it get things exactly right.
I personally think using either one of them can improve your life a lot, and I'd recommend people learn either one. I started with vim and recently got into emacs, but heavy customization from spacemacs and evil-mode are what make it fairly painless. Vim's claim to fame is largely in the keybinds while emacs does stuff like document everything and give you a nice platform to build on top of. I'm glad I learned about modal editing, but also very glad I learned about stuff like helm and org-mode.
I used vim for a long time and now use Emacs doom/evil over top for most of my daily work. I’d say the part of the key bindings that I find hard to live without is the modal editing side of it which helps me really think about the macros I use when moving around or editing.
The other thing I really love is the integration with the old ed editor so you can quickly do several really flexible edits with regex and get what you want. I’m sure emac’s built in functionality can do some/most of the stuff but it’s no where near as concise and other editors have no such built in functionality to speak of.
When I first started using code editors I chose Emacs but was often worried I made the wrong choice and should have used vim. Until one day I realized that what makes vim great is the keybindings, not the software. Take away the modal editing and all you are left with is another crappy terminal editor. Once I had that epiphany I switched to evil mode and never looked back.
If you haven’t yet developed your Emacs muscle memory, consider taking a look at Evil. I switched about 7 years ago after well over a decade of using the default Emacs text editor. It was the right move. VIM IMHO just is a better editor. Emacs is the better everything else, but thanks to Evil, you can both eat this cake and have it, too.
For me, a good stepping stone to Evil was God mode. It strips away the need to mash modifier keys, but retains all the Emacs keyboard bindings. It gives you a glimpse of what using a modal editor is like, roughly, with a tiny cognitive effort investment.
And if you like modal editing but want to stick to a more emacs-centric interaction, there is God mode which I eventually found to be better than evil if you are working solely within emacs.
Definitely agree that if you are using thumbs to execute all Emacs commands, it's just as comfortable as modal editing. Since I started using Evil a year or so ago I have become very used to it and I'm now using a strange combination of vim keybindings for text manipulation and Emacs bindings for everything else (saving files, switching buffers, etc.)
As much as vim is known as the modal editor, that sounds like you're describing Emacs (I'm using evil-mode instead of vim these days.) Whereas vim has dual-modality as its core, it's very well-defined and self-contained as far as modes go, and with the exception of this Ex mode, you can get out of any weird state by pressing Esc. Emacs, on the other hand, has potentially dozens of different 'modes' you can accidentally find yourself in, and each one seeming to have a different way of getting out, it drives me insane! Even a question in Emacs which can only be answered by typing out 'yes' or 'no', and by no other frigging escape sequence, is a mode come from hell. Worse yet, press Esc and Emacs goes into the mode of a mode where it briefly becomes unresponsive as it lets you know that you are WRONG.
Vim to me is like having a smooth technical conversation with a work partner. Emacs is like conversing with my partially deaf grandpa.
Yep, as a 5+ year vim (then nvi) user...emacs was a eye opening text editor and gets way too much hate for no reason...people say emacs is not modal...but everytime you press control, alt, meta, hyper or super, you enter a mode...then every other subsequent key could put you into another mode. It doesnt make sense to vi users at first, but after you swap control with caos lock and a few other adjustments it really is better.
I used modal editors for a couple of decades['72-late 80s], and still haven't managed to become proficient with either vi or emacs (or variants or descendants thereof). Currently just use TextMate or PLT or CCL editors.
I use Emacs as my main editor, but its keybindings are not something I would suggest learning it for. Most shells and Readline programs also support Vi mode, and I would argue that its modal keybindings are much more intuitive and powerful than a random combination of keys. In fact, I would probably not use Emacs at all if evil-mode didn't exist.
Emacs is whatever you want it to be, and it has wonderful modal editing packages such as evil-mode[1] - which surpasses the editing system from vi that it is based on - and Meow[2]
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