Saying they're both turing complete isn't saying much. Firstly, even when comparing turing complete languages, it can be sometimes easy to pick out a superior o

Saying they're both turing complete isn't saying much. Firstly, even when comparing turing complete languages, it can be sometimes easy to pick out a superior one with respect to development (e.g. Brainfuck VS Haskell, also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit). Secondly, it's not just about turing completeness, it is also about APIs. These languages -- vim script and emacs lisp -- don't live in total isolation, they live in an environment. Thus, it is not only the language we are comparing, but also the environment/API (what can you call? how is it called? how easy is it to do X? how many tools are available at-hand VS tools I have to build myself? etc.)