Think about the time in which emacs was written though. In 1985 it was absolutely ground-breaking, and has stood the test of time. I've seen PhD dissertations

Think about the time in which emacs was written though. In 1985 it was absolutely ground-breaking, and has stood the test of time. I've seen PhD dissertations approved at reputable schools for reimplementing Apache Storm badly. And emacs is one example of a lot of really valuable contributions to the state of the art Stallman has made. Honestly, his political fame is the least interesting thing about his career, in my opinion. Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy and I use vim. :-)