A few years ago I switched to emacs because I needed a cross-platform editor that worked with multiple languages and was available on command-line Linux. vi(m) was (and is) unintuitive.
As you work with emacs and customize it to work with your flow, your hands, and your keyboard, it starts to feel as comfortable as old shoes. Over time, the incremental efficiencies add up, and it becomes clear that a non-customizable editor just isn't as useful.
Contrary to parfe's experience, I've had good experience with Emacs packages, but then again, I don't use very intrusive addons, and keep my emacs pretty up-to-date.
Happened to me, on vim – i used to work with TextMate, and I really wanted a text editor that I could easily use on my servers as well as on my local computer.
I started using vim, and at first, it was kind of hard to get used to all the commands and remember everything... but after a while (1~2 weeks) it felt so fluid and easy – everything makes kind of sense, it's easy to install new plugins (pathogen ftw!), it's easy to hack those plugins, themes (most of the time) just works.
As you work with emacs and customize it to work with your flow, your hands, and your keyboard, it starts to feel as comfortable as old shoes. Over time, the incremental efficiencies add up, and it becomes clear that a non-customizable editor just isn't as useful.
Contrary to parfe's experience, I've had good experience with Emacs packages, but then again, I don't use very intrusive addons, and keep my emacs pretty up-to-date.