> Sure, it's a good bit of work, but you get a better environment out of it.

That's subjective, though. For some people, it's use the same tool for as much as possible; for others, it's use the right tool for the job.

There's pretty much no objective way to compare Emacs to Visual Studio (or any other IDE, for that matter) since they all perform the same general functions, some more generally than others. When you get down to specifics, it's usually a case of apples and oranges.