But I came back to it, and stayed for good, because Emacs is really an OS with a nice editor. So you can have the same approach of do one thing and do it well, but you have different packages instead of different programs. And they synergize nicely. So it's not only an IDE. Everything I use is purpose-built for that one task, including ledger (accounting), mu4e (mail), lsp (IDE-features), org (agenda, research, documentation) magit (git) etc. None of these things are "plugins". They're programs in their own right, just like ls and mutt, and git themselves.
The point of Emacs is that it's a text-editor, and as someone editing text all day (code, documentation, etc) I want the best, most consistent text-editing and text-process possible, without having to jump from tool to tool.
With Emacs, you can mold everything you do to be consistent across all dimensions you can imagine. Once you get used to it, it is very weird (unthinkable?) to go back to other tools.
You can also takes notes in markdown docs and/or code comments (it has a built-in TODO detector and organizer).
> they use an unholy mix of JetBrains, GitKraken and the command line on Linux, and Tortoise, SourceTree, JetBrains and the command line on Windows
I just use SmartGit for git. It's configurable with workflows (or custom commands), navigable with a keyboard, visual, clickable, and actually "smart" -- it warns you if it thinks you're about to do something stupid, like overwrite a repository's history.
> In Emacs, I read my mail, I organise my agenda, I write technical reports, blog posts, I wrote my entire thesis in org-mode. I collect research notes in Emacs, and a journal. I do my bookkeeping and accounting in Emacs. I write Confluence articles, so I don't have to deal with Confluence's shitty interface.
This is good info. These are all things I really, really don't want to do in my IDE. I want my IDE to be a good IDE, and I want my other tools to be purpose-built as well.
Switching apps is not painful to me at all. I often have a screen with a git GUI, IDE, browser, and DB GUI all open at the same time.