There's a selection bias at work - emacs. I haven't met many people who casually use emacs (other than those trying it out for the firs time, or giving it anot

There's a selection bias at work - emacs. I haven't met many people who casually use emacs (other than those trying it out for the firs time, or giving it another shot, (or another, or another)) For those who really GET emacs, and think in emacs, it becomes their entire workflow - as they can automate everything from emacs, incrementally. Those guys that work with 80 or 90 buffers open didn't start out that way - they grew over the years to working that way by tweaking more and more functionality to bend it to their will. You can extend lots of editors - but there's something about emacs and it's lisp nature that lends itself to this kind of developer.