[uludag]

As an Emacs users who often tries to do as many things as possible in Emacs, I would say that the more stuff you can do in Emacs, the more the various features in Emacs compound with each other, giving you more utility.

For example, I use the Verb package for making HTTP requests. So with Emacs as my HTTP client, I can do bulk HTTP request calls with keyboard macros. The HTTP requests can be stored in org-mode. I can write custom Elisp for special authentication scenarios. I can create new commands if I need them.

For this example, I can imagine (haven't used this myself) scenarios like creating a keyboard macro to shave off the first X seconds of a video usable with dired.

Some non-text-editing things in Emacs that are actually extremely useful:

  - Git via Magit
  - Managing files with Dired
  - Media player with Emms
  - RSS feeds with elfeed
  and the list goes on and on...

Using a well thought-out Emacs interface for anything is one of the biggest sources of joy in my technical life.

[Zobat]

Using well thought out interfaces is a joy wherever we find them.

Something in your comment made me remember a DOS based file "explorer". Screen split down the middle with a folder-tree and file list on both sides. I remember hardly ever turning on the computer without starting that for one task or another. That was some serious UI pleasure, at least for the time. Ha, found it:

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Software:File_Commander

Ah, the nostalgia!

[kickingvegas]

Nostalgia no more! Midnight Commander/4DOS style file management can be achieved with Emacs Dired today and then some.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Di...

For your consideration, I built a keyboard-driven menu interface for Dired called Casual to help with discovery. https://kickingvegas.github.io/casual/Dired.html

[shadowgovt]

Getting deep enough into it, it basically becomes your shell, complete with the ability shells have to orchestrate multiple programs into a meta-program.

[NDxTreme]

Not to mention the actual eshell, implementation, or the ability to use any other shell in one of several terminals.