While my custom keybindings are something I would not want to give up they can be replicated in any other editor that provides this basic functionality. What cannot be replicated is the whole reason why I prefer emacs, I like being able to use it like a file explorer, like a terminal, I like being able to open or edit pretty much any type of file I ever use. When you combine the ability to work/view most of the files with consistent keybindings, that is the killer feature that emacs provides, its never been about the keybindings.
I'm curious though, I never really got into vim as soon I realized that it only makes sense if your layout is qwerty. Is vim just its keybindings? or is it like emacs in that the keybindings are not the main reason people use it?.
Edit: TLDR - vim is sometimes better than sed for making changes to files, but in my mind that's about it.
The other thing I really love is the integration with the old ed editor so you can quickly do several really flexible edits with regex and get what you want. I’m sure emac’s built in functionality can do some/most of the stuff but it’s no where near as concise and other editors have no such built in functionality to speak of.
I get that too but with Vim. People think Vim is just about the controls because all they know about Vim is the :q joke. No, that IDE's Vim plugin doesn't cut it, because unfortunately it comes with an IDE and its distracting overloaded UI, weird tab switching behaviour, absolutely infuriating popups and other annoyances.
Vim being just a really flexible and fast editor with a mostly empty status line as the entire user interface is a feature.
I don't play many games these days, and I certainly don't use their hotkeys (I play exclusively on consoles these days, lazily).
None of this likely has anything to do with the article. I'm sorry to report that I did not read it. I come here for the commentary, not the article. I am guilty of that.