In principle, I agree with you. But there is a practical issue: if everyone used the same editor core, then we could all share improvements to it. Kinda like how the explosion of creativity in the Web (for good or for ill — I am still unpersuaded the JavaScript and SPAs are a good thing) was enabled by the common platform of HTTP+HTML+CSS+JavaScript.
Instead, we have some people writing extensions in elisp for Emacs, some in Vimscript for vim, some in JavaScript for VSCode, some brilliant madmen in rc for acme, some poor saps in Java for Eclipse.
In the end, I wonder if this is not more of a theoretical waste, though. Just like a command economy theoretically has less waste than a free market, but in practice every real-world free market has orders of magnitude less waste than any command economy, I wonder if in practice the profusion of editors has helped keep us from being locked into a local maximum (and argument which can be made against HTTP+HTML+CSS+JavaScript, BTW …).
It’s tough to say, it really is. For my part, I wish more folks would give Emacs a fair try, and I also wish that Emacs were a little easier to give a fair try. It is by far the single best editor/IDE/platform/OS out there.
Instead, we have some people writing extensions in elisp for Emacs, some in Vimscript for vim, some in JavaScript for VSCode, some brilliant madmen in rc for acme, some poor saps in Java for Eclipse.
In the end, I wonder if this is not more of a theoretical waste, though. Just like a command economy theoretically has less waste than a free market, but in practice every real-world free market has orders of magnitude less waste than any command economy, I wonder if in practice the profusion of editors has helped keep us from being locked into a local maximum (and argument which can be made against HTTP+HTML+CSS+JavaScript, BTW …).
It’s tough to say, it really is. For my part, I wish more folks would give Emacs a fair try, and I also wish that Emacs were a little easier to give a fair try. It is by far the single best editor/IDE/platform/OS out there.