I've used emacs for about... gosh, 18 years now since I first learned it in 1999 in my high school AP CS class. I'd say the main benefits of learning emacs or

I've used emacs for about... gosh, 18 years now since I first learned it in 1999 in my high school AP CS class. I'd say the main benefits of learning emacs or vim today are: 1. Exposure to the history of systems they embody. 2. Experiencing the philosophy that customizability should be a key characteristic of your tools and work environment. For the first, deep use of emacs will teach you about using lisp in a non-academic way; self-documenting systems; modularity; maybe even the unix command line. Oh, and the indisputable fact that your caps lock key should be remapped to Ctrl. :) For the second, you have a fair bit of customizability in JetBrains but it's nothing compared with emacs or vim. In both of those there is incredible power to modify the behavior of the environment, and the incredible range of ways this power has been applied is a testament to its design.