VI is modal text editor (think JEdit). Emacs is IDE (think Eclipse). Vim can be upgraded to IDE with plugins, and Emacs can be downgrade to a plain text editor

VI is modal text editor (think JEdit). Emacs is IDE (think Eclipse). Vim can be upgraded to IDE with plugins, and Emacs can be downgrade to a plain text editor, so they are comparable, but their primary goals are different: Vim focus is on editing of text, while Emacs focus is on integration of editor with tools. If you need a development environment, then forget about Vim, JEdit, nano, pico, etc. If you need just a text editor, then forget about Emacs, Eclipse, Idea, VSCode, etc.