What specifically do you find so great about Emacs? I've forced myself to try it a few times but I couldn't get past the slow performance of the editor itself and the unreliability of basic things like syntax highlighting.
For me I find it quite performant once it's actually running. I've never had a problem with highlights either. Usually there is a minor mode for even the most esoteric language
I was using it to write C++. The default cc-mode didn't work properly. I was then pointed to various random plugins that people had written to address various modern C++ syntax issues but each had their own bugs.
Text editing is basically 90% of command-line interfaces, and Emacs has its own Unix-like shell with Unix-like utilities (that work the same on every platform, even Windows), terminal emulator, file manager, a bunch of email clients (I stopped using any for a while, although I plan to try using mu4e over the holidays), add-ons for any kind of programming language and version control and build system, stuff like calendars and spreadsheets, a file system emulator that lets you transparently work with remote files over a bunch of different protocols (no need to try to set up NFS or whatever on Windows), and all this works the same on any OS and over a terminal connection. It is a great text UI for most computing tasks.
