> I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all.
It's not about being "pure". I was originally interested in Emacs because of the idea of only ever having to learn to use one tool, that would give me a better experience in many different domains.
Since, as you say, that doesn't really work, I personally don't find using Emacs compelling anymore, hence my not using it. (I actually used vim for a long time, then Emacs briefly, and now VSCode/Cursor/other things as the need arises.)
Note that I worked with Emacs already a few years ago, and it was Spacemacs specifically.
That said, VSCode is - much nicer looking, a lot of things come working out of the box that I had to work hard to make work in Emacs (even with Spacemacs), a lot of great plugins exist and are easy to add to VSCode.
Really it's the "great experience out of the box" and lack of weird edge cases where custom code/plugins interact with other custom code/plugins in ways that don't work well.
And the vim mode in Spacemacs was great, probably best in class, but the vim mode in VSCode is also pretty good. Missing a bunch of stuff but close enough.
Makes sense. I have no experience with Vi-like layers built on top of Emacs, but I think standard Emacs is much easier to use right now than it was in the past. Most major packages work really well with zero configuration. There's even a LSP mode (eglot) built in.
I think the problem is that most advanced users have incredibly convoluted .emacs files, mainly for historical reasons, and this has given Emacs a reputation of being overly complex and difficult to set up.
IMHO, the great advantage of Emacs is that it will always be around, and it's really open to customization in case you ever need that.
> I really dont get the idea of having a vim mode in emacs
vim-mode is not just about keybindings.
It's about modal editing philosophy - the distinction between command and insert modes fundamentally changes how you think about text manipulation. When you're in command mode, every key becomes a text object or motion command, making complex edits incredibly efficient. You're not just getting vim's keybindings; you're getting vim's grammar of editing. The real power comes from composability - vim motions aren't just shortcuts - they're a linguistic system for describing text transformations.
Emacs veterans often detest "modality" without realizing how much modality already exists in Emacs. Key chords like C-x put you in a modal state where the next key has different meaning. Recording macros creates a modal context. The minibuffer is literally a different mode with its own keybindings and behavior. Transient menus are explicitly modal interfaces. Even isearch is a modal state. Vim-style modality is just making this concept more explicit and systematic.
Besides, it's simply an obtuse exercise to ask Emacs users why would they do something with their editor. The answer is obviously "because they can."
Vim's model of modality and mnemonics is a beautiful, powerful, amazing paradigm. Here's the thing though - there's no such thing as the "vim-mode". None of the IDEs and editors like IntelliJ, VSCode, XCode, Android Studio, Sublime, etc., can properly emulate Vim navigation. The one exception is Emacs.
Pretty much every other IDE fails to comprehensively replicate Vim. Unless it's Vim/Neovim, vim-mode in all of them is just that - an emulation. However, Evil mode in Emacs feels much more natural. Sometimes, you forget that it's an afterthought, an extension, and not a built-in functionality.
While Evil-mode obviously is not the most important or even built-in feature of Emacs, as a nerd and a computer programmer, if I discovered that there's a civilian plane that can perform a vertical landing, yet never actually needs to use it, I would still love that model over any other planes, even if the feature is purely accidental. The fact that it can do so alone would be great evidence of amazing engineering.
vim mode is far, far better than any alternative way of using a keyboard (because you don't have to ever move your hands from home row). Even without vim mode, just the vim keybindings by themselves are far better. Once I got used to using them, using a keyboard without them felt stupid.
Hence my using vim mode everywhere I can.
I also created a set of mappings to give me vim-style keybindings everywhere on the computer, so I can use vim-style bindings even within this very comment I'm typing on my browser. Obviously it doesn't support the full set of vim bindings, but just the basic movements and some other mappings (like selecting a word/sentence, backwards delete word, etc) are enough to get a huge amount of value.
It's not about being "pure". I was originally interested in Emacs because of the idea of only ever having to learn to use one tool, that would give me a better experience in many different domains.
Since, as you say, that doesn't really work, I personally don't find using Emacs compelling anymore, hence my not using it. (I actually used vim for a long time, then Emacs briefly, and now VSCode/Cursor/other things as the need arises.)