The problem with Emacs' configuration file is that it's processed in an additive way. Removing options and reloading the config does absolutely nothing. So in certain situations a restart is just inevitable.
But aside from that Emacs, like most programs, has a UX philosophy that I can't stand. And while Emacs lets me change that I don't want to manually redefine things for every single filetype and mode I'm using. Vim just does it right unless I make the mistake of writing JS in HTML files.
Vim is a fantastic editor---no argument there!
But you can always revert a configuration choice you made without restarting Emacs. Either use the built in configuration interface, or evaluate a form with the change. For example, if you set something to t you can reset it to nil and just C-x-e that form.
Re:Why Emacs: Redux
by ReleaseCandidat on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @08:42AM
(#29252825)
>The only time I restart SLIME is when I do something I shouldn't, like redefine a struct or something.
That's not something you shouldn't do and you also shouldn't need to restart Slime. Just break using `C-c C-c` and do a 'retry'.
BTW, all software that changes will have a bug from time to time, but Emacs and things related to Common Lisp are like at the very bottom of the trouble-frequency charts. I can't think of any software that I use regularly that gives me fewer problems. For the record I never encountered a bug in either (which doesn't mean they don't exist).