Note that I'm referring to Visual Studio, not VS Code.
In my last job, we didn't use any plugins with Visual Studio for a bunch of years before one developer convinced the rest to use Resharper.
> Almost everyone using a text editor is using it for purposes which would definitely be helped by task-specific enhancements (plugins which are typically much easier to get in other editors/IDEs)
I find this statement untethered from reality. I think this gets to the crux of much of this discussion. There seems to be an implicit assumption that Emacs exist for writing code (hence the comparisons with VS Code, etc).
I think if you poll most Emacs users, while programming will definitely have more weight, a lot of people use Emacs for all kinds of things unrelated to programming: TODO management, document authoring, writing emails, etc. Most of my Emacs usage in my first job was simply editing text files, not programming. This is in line with most non-SW engineering jobs: They need text editors, but not plugins. Over 95% of my home usage is non-programming related.
So when you imply almost everyone using a text editor is using it for purposes where they will want to look for plugins, that's simply far from the truth. Until recently, most people who used text editors used Notepad (the default Windows one), and I've never managed to convince a Notepad user to use anything more powerful. Nice plugins would not sway them.
While Emacs is heavily used by some programmers, I do not think it is the aim of Emacs. It is a general purpose text editor, and a platform for writing text oriented apps.
Those still need addons/plugins like org, mu4e or some other mail client, etc. This my point — not just a vanilla text editor.
> While I agree that a convenient way to download things from MELPA would be nice, I hardly see not having it as a barrier. Most people new to, say, Visual Studio don't start with "How do I download plugins".
I think this statement is untethered from reality, and matches approximately zero people I know. Almost everyone using a text editor is using it for purposes which would definitely be helped by task-specific enhancements (plugins which are typically much easier to get in other editors/IDEs)
> I did not have access to an expert. I simply read a book on it [...] given that the only reason I began using Emacs is that the other option people led me to (vi) was even harder to do basic text editing.
Yes, and the fact of the matter is that today people have many editor options which are very powerful and also have a much friendlier learning curve.