[mattbriggs]

vims extensibility is a commonly cited positive, but I totally do not understand it, since pretty much every editor imaginable is extensible in similar fashion, and pretty much all of the use better languages then vim.

By contrast, emacs is basically an application platform that ships with an editor implementation, and eclipse is a platform for building editors.

It's not that vim isn't extensible, it is, just not as much as other alternatives, and nowhere near as easily as most of its competition.

IMO the real advantage of vim is that it is a highly efficient and productive tool that works great without any customization, and is available everywhere without installation. Which is pretty much the opposite of the above opinion.