It's such a nice UI paradigm married to a decent lisp (any lisp is better than no lisp :)). Once you get the actual hang of it you can't ever leave it. Just like real coffee vs. instant abominations.
Edit: also a long-term Emacs convert, just haven't written any of the elisp myself.
Using tools lik Org mode, Rmail, Elfeed etc. gives you many opportunities to write some useful elisp, which is a pedagogical experience.
Emacs is like the mildly beautiful geeky girl which you fall in love with: whenever she spots you inclined to some new cute girl, instead of going mad with you, reveals such a wonderful piece of her interior world that you just forget the other one :)