Is this related to the proliferation of JavaScript libraries and hip new languages? I honestly don't know.
They then call out features like cross platform editing, a package manager, smart autocompletion, file system browser, multiple panes, find and replace, themes and customization. If this list defines what they mean by "modern" then Emacs has been modern since before modern was a thing text editors needed to be.
However "approachability" is the one characteristic that stands out because it's subjective and that's telling. I would guess most people who aren't already familiar with Emacs find it daunting, just a little bit too different from the rest, and I can see a natural reluctance to invest time in learning something so different if the outcome (how productive will I be?) is unclear.
The other way to look at that question is to consider who the developers were back then and what alternatives they had. Emacs or vi compares very well at first glance to a tool like ed... but maybe not so much when side by side with Eclipse, etc. It's a harder sell these days, and that's only more true when you consider all the language/ecosystem integration you get from a modern IDE.
Emacs and vi also tend to be the kinds of tools that reward long-term study and practice. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd guess that with the massive increase in the prevalence of developers over the last 30-40, that it's brought in huge number of people that have little to no interest in learning the vi editing language, Emacs Lisp, etc.
> absolute power & extensibility (as with emacs).
As a 25 year Emacs user, I question the 'absolute power' bit... there's a lot of magic that's easy out of the box in IntelliJ or Eclipse that's quite difficult in Emacs... Maybe the situation could be different in theory, but it's not right now and many people have many good reasons for focusing on the 'right now'.
“modern” seems to be a curse word these days, all the time I find it being used it’s used to describe something despicable like the systemd ecosystem.
- On the frontend - On the backend - In their build process - In plugins and tooling
There’s something to be said for that.
- Install like you do for other apps on your operating system
- Type code in it (you can already type in the rest of your operating system just fine, using CUA standards)
- Save and open files as you expect, manage multiple files like you manage tabs in a web browser
In other words, you can get going and add complexity when you feel the need for it; but you're not confronted with knowing it as a prerequisite, and missing 'table-stakes' features (e.g. syntax highlighting for all common languages) without messing around in a niche editor specific language.
When my employer turned off the company-internal Jabber server in favour of, out of all things, Hipchat, I moved my team mates to IRC. (They also seem to all know at least some vi, even the trainee.)