I know, I use Emacs+Evil. I'm going to give Ki a try and, in case of success, to think about writing Ki binding for Emacs.

emacs already has structural editing packages like combobulate

Hey, that one is interesting, somehow I have missed it. Thank you!

This is the first time I've heard about Emacs trying to look nice.

Vim is Emacs applied to Vi

Not even close.

How is it not?

Scripting language? Check!

Custom commands? Check!

Windows management? Check!

Build tools integration and error-based navigation? Check!

File manager? Check!

Operating system? Check or not? :D

Vim has stopped before that particular threshold. But if ever Neovim get a GUI version, I believe the community will soon have its own Gnus, Eww, and EMMS.

I think the "Scripting language? Check!" is missing an important distinctions between Emacs and most other extensible editors. The proportion of the code editor features that are written in the configuration/extension language matters

Looking at the Emacs and NeoVim codebases in GitHub: Emacs is 74.6% ELisp or CommonLisp and NeoVim is 71.9% Lua or VimScript. Never mind, NeoVim is close!

But, can you at runtime modify the NeoVim core functions? Honest question because I've only used vim and VimScript was definately limited compared to elisp. If so, then I say NeoVim and Emacs are both highly-extensible editors.

None of those capture the essence of emacs, which is that it is a scripting language repl where the vast majority of functionality is implemented in that language and can be inspected, debugged and modified at runtime.

Emacs is a general purpose programming/computing environment that ships with a text editor and some other nice features. Vim is a text editor and some other nice features that ships with a scripting mechanism. Not the same thing.

Nah. NeoVim a tiny little bit, maybe.

Right, but we are discussing editors here.

Hold on. Operating systems and long-running esoteric history are always on topic here, right?

(This is spoken with something close to affection; I look fondly on my former Emacs days. I'm probably more likely than not to enjoy the company of a human who has at least tried Emacs and had some thoughtful reaction to it. I may not use it now, but the ideas live on in how I think and what I expect. Editors that push the limits, whatever those limits are, are part of the old school ethos I love about programming.)

Evil mode is a perfectly reasonable text editor.

"Emacs is an editor" is as true as "Toyota Hilux is a gattling gun carrier"

>_<