Emacs can seamlessly access files over ssh, ftp and/or sudo.
Emacs lets me add custom hook commands to run before a file is saved (to check a file’s syntax using an external command), and after it’s saved (to signal reloading of the file to the relevant process).
Emacs also includes my mail reader, my diary, my organizer, a spreadsheet, an stack-based algebraic calculator, etc. but those may be unfair comparisons. :)
Note: All of the above are part of the built-in functionality of Emacs. Third-party extensions can of course do anything.
That being said I don't think it's that big a deal but I've seen some fucking vim wizards churn out code faster than what's reasonable for human beings
As far as I'm aware multicursors are a superset of block editing (i.e. multicursors can emulate block editing but the reverse is not true), so many (most?) modern IDEs can at least emulate block editing.
Maybe this has changed in recent years, but in the past whenever I tried IDEs I would be amazed that they didn't have keyboard macros.
I hear it all the time. People saying things like "I use vi/vim instead of an IDE because I can do X" where X is a feature that every IDE worth using has had for 10 years.
I've literally had someone say that they use vi/vim because it does syntax highlighting. What were they using before? Notepad? gedit? Even gedit has syntax highlighting.
"Oh, I use this magical vim plugin that lets me hit this magical key combination and all my code gets automatically formatted." Yeah, but Visual Studio, PyCharm, Eclipse, and basically any other IDE do that out of the box. No plugins necessary.
I don't think I've ever seen someone describe a feature that vi/vim/emacs has that an IDE doesn't (EDIT: Other than the fact that every *nix system is going to have vi, but that's just an argument for knowing how to use it, not one for preferring it over an IDE if one is available). It's like iPhone versus Android about five years ago, where the iPhone fanboys/girls would praise Apple for their innovation for implementing features Android had over a year prior.