My learning path was 1) use vim/nvim for a couple years 2) use Doom Emacs. I was shocked at how intuitive Doom is for me. Of course not everyone would agree but it’s worth checking out
More recently I've been reading the Org manual (1), which like Spacemacs opened my eyes to Org mode's capabilities: literate programming and code blocks that modify the source document captured my interest, along with table and spreadsheet capabilities.
I still use nvim all the time in the terminal; vi knowledge is essential, as it's the best editor you can be sure to have on a UNIX-like system. Case in point: Today I used vi in kterm on my jailbroken Kindle Touch to edit usbnet's SSHD config (2) and I can't imagine a more efficient editor (3) for an eInk device.
P.S. My favorite thing about Emacs is the help system. Being able to look up a function or what a key does with a few keypresses is fantastic!
1: https://orgmode.org/org.pdf
2: Now I can use `scp` or SFTP from my laptop and or iPhone to add books to my Kindle while it's connected to my iPhone hotspot
At the time I much preferred vim’s approach of being an excellent IDE. I didn’t like Emacs’ approach of being… everything. However, being able to browse the web, check email, read ebooks, use the terminal, interact with JIRA or GitHub or Notion etc etc, all within my IDE really does have its appeal.
But I’ll always love vim and nvim, I think every software developer should learn it
What is better about vim? Evil mode in emacs has the same keybinds you're used to. Extensibility and customization is 100x better since everything is lua, instead of trying to twist viml to do what it wasn't meant to do. Unless you just want to use base vi on every machine you ssh into, it's hard to find ways vim is better.
My main reasoning is precisely the opposite reason as your sibling comment mentions - I have no interest in my editor supporting barely tangential things like web browsing, email, etc. The ability to spawn a terminal is nice (and mine can do so), but my terminal (Kitty) can also easily split itself and switch context between nvim/terminal so it's not critical.