What I mean is that the notion that Emacs/Vim require endless fiddling is unfounded. It caters to both the people that want something easy to use, and those that want endless customization. For those that want something easy to use, Emacs distributions are built and maintained by very experienced Emacs users who curate and put together an Emacs with everything you need. All you have to do is use it, which doesn't even require much learning thanks to `which-key` integration.
Productivity is a bad word. Productivity can mean low value busy work, or it can mean high value thinking. High value thinking leads to longer term success, because it is not easily bought or replaced. It requires an individual who has invested in a breadth and depth of knowledge by not choosing the path of least resistance. We should choose tools that optimize for this type of long term success. Choosing free and open source software is a choice for long term sustainability of our industry. Choosing a tool like Vim/Emacs is a long term choice towards individual success.
This is the philosophy I follow, and I have been very successful with it both financially and in terms of making an impact on the industry. It isn't novel either, I simply emulate the many, many expert programmers who universally choose to still use Emacs/Vim despite the existence of "smarter" IDEs.
