Learning Emacs is VERY clearly not this trivial... to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's competitors, you have to learn the models it works in, a new programming language- and then there are a LOT of keystrokes
It probably is a good idea to learn it, in some sense, and you'll probably have to pick up at least the basics that I've picked up, but it's definitely not a commitment to learn a new language.
I'd consider myself an advanced user of emacs, but that still doesn't mean that I have any motivation to write any new emacs modes or functions, since just about everything I could ever want already exists!
Plus, it's the same race car. I've programmed half-a-dozen languages quite seriously in emacs, and I'm not changing editors the whole time. So, while I may not know elisp, I do know a fair amount about emacs and don't have to relearn how to do a lot of things in a new IDE every three years... or, worse yet, discover that entire features are missing because "nobody" has ever used an editor that had them. (I'm not sure I could live without macros of some sort in an editor.)
An experienced racer would be much better off with driving in manual, but for a beginner or someone never expecting to push the car to its limits the automated gears are plenty good enough.
Let's take these claims one by one:
> you have to learn the models it works in
I read a book on Emacs and practiced along all within one week. At the end of the week, I was doing more with it than with any of the previous text editors I used.
Indeed, my desire to learn Emacs was explicitly to replace the other editors I was using - and I succeeded. Over the subsequent weeks, every time I encountered a situation where I said "Oh, I wish the feature I used in editor X existed in Emacs", a quick Google search told me how to set it up for Emacs.
> a new programming language
I was a power Emacs user for over 9 years before I learned Emacs Lisp. Clearly wrong claim.
> and then there are a LOT of keystrokes
While I'll admit you get more productive the more you learn, for most of those 9 years I did not know many keystrokes. Instead, you do M-x and the command. With completion systems like ido (the "simplest" of the powerful completion systems), you can quickly find the desired command just by guessing what it will be named.
I only started learning lots of keystrokes recently, using flashcard software. And even with that, I stopped after about a year once I learned how to use hydra.
For instance- search and replace. I'm not an IDE user, but I'm sure I could pop open any modern IDE and find and use search and replace in roughly 5 seconds. Emacs- is that discoverable? Or does it require documentation?
The people who Emacs will please most are power users who are willing to put in the time to learn it and configure it to their liking.
I’ll concede that one can be extremely productive using Emacs or Vim, but the steadfastness to refuse to adapt to changes in how most developers work isn’t going to help win any arguments.