I avoided #emacs for many years due to my desire to use utilities that stick to the UNIX philosophy of do one thing and do it well. I also avoided it because I've had #vi keybindings in muscle memory for the last 15+ years. Last year, I made the switch to emacs due to a Lisp project I was working on and I'm glad I got over my fears. While there's quite a bit more for me to learn, it's been a wonderful environment for development and general system things. I've even moved some non-work things into it.