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Emacs is a text editor at its core, just like vim. The difference is that emacs is extendable. You can write, or install, custom packages for it to make it do damn near anything you ever want, far, far above and beyond just text processing.

Vim is simple and unobtrusive, it has a job and it performs that job and nothing else. It is the purest essence of a text editor. Emacs is an all purpose tool that can be tweaked and changed based on your current or future needs. They appeal to different types of nerds.