I believe they’re talking about a different “hard way” in that they’re suggesting you can’t have those features in vim / eMacs etc and have to do something else

I believe they’re talking about a different “hard way” in that they’re suggesting you can’t have those features in vim / eMacs etc and have to do something else instead. You’re not wrong, configuring these editors is 100% the hard way (that doesn’t stop me from doing it though).