Toward a "modern" Emacs

Toward a "modern" Emacs

So I have been using vi(m) since the 1990s and emacs since about 2003. This article and the comments are very interesting. Here is my take

• For quick-and-dirty editing I use vi (I type "vi", it invokes vim in terminal mode). For coding I use emacs.
• The look-and-feel of emacs doesn't bother me.
• But for both vim and emacs, I have only scratched the surface of their power it seems; eg I didn't realize that "undo trees" were a thing, and wonder why I didn't know. So, discoverability is important.
• This may be because I tend to RTFM up until the point where it is not too difficult to do something; then just go with what I know and am comfortable with. I don't know how typical I am here.
• Also, I use emacs as an editor, not an IDE. I save the code and do other stuff from the terminal. (These days I use jupyter a lot, for python and julia; but I often do major edits of the code in emacs anyway.)
• I am aware of atom, vscode, etc; not particularly tempted to switch.
• Once upon a time emacs was seen as bloated and slow. Now we have editors written in typescript/javascript running on atom. So a lisp interpreter seems like no big deal.
• But, sad to say, younger people know to program javascript; they don't know common lisp or scheme, still less emacs lisp.
• My main languages are python, julia, latex; and previously, C, ocaml.
• My teenage son is getting into coding, and I find it hard to justify emacs to him. He is using atom.
• Discoverability of advanced options, and default keybindings that match with common current usage (but can be configured away), would definitely make it easier to encourage younger people to use emacs.
• Support for a widespread language (javascript, python, whatever) as an underlying engine would be even better, but I imagine, much harder -- even guile-emacs didn't really work out.