It's interesting that people keep using the word "better" when it comes to new editors/languages/frameworks/etc, yet as an industry we have very little evidence to proof it.
I've been doing this programming thing since the 80's, and the only thing I've seen that has really made software development better have been better practices.
Maybe we should first review our definition of "better" before we label something with it. Too often it's used as a synonym for "ooh, shiny!".
Maybe not, but I'd take pass-the-floppy over AccuRev or Perforce any day.
Yeah, git and its kin are really nice, but the expensive version control systems I've been required to use in enterprise settings are awful. So awful that many people actually just email source files back and forth so they don't have to deal with it.
So, version control has made things better in some areas. But enterprise version control feels more like a step back to me. AccuRev has literally stolen entire mornings from me because what should have been a simple two-minute check-in took almost 3 hours to complete and was interactive! Yay!
we all have far less time than it would require to learn all of the interesting things. Once you get good with an editor your time is much better spent learning a new data structure, algorithm, language paradigm, etc than learning a new editor.
Thats maybe true for the vims and emacses of the world, but these new editors come with a fancy pants thing called a GUI. These GUI thingys adhere to certain standards and customs that are set by the OS. I do some web development work from time to time and therefore I have multiple browsers installed on my machine. I can switch between them without having to dig through a manual! I have to learn hardly anything!
I don't know how long Emacs has had a GUI, but it's at least 20 years.
I don't remember what the graphical capabilities of GNU Emacs are like, as I only use the command line version, but XEmacs at least also has extensive support for bitmaps graphics in buffers that far exceeds most of these "new editors".
It's hard to track down when it was introduced, but it looks like there was at least some bitmap support as far back as Emacs 18, which predates the XEmacs split and indicates that at least basic support may date back to 1986.
As others have pointed out, Emacs has a GUI. But the fact that you didn't know this might suggest that the GUI part of Emacs isn't integrally linked to the killer features of Emacs.
Learning tools like Emacs is for many a matter of productivity. If you want productivity, you want to streamline your most commonly used actions. Streamlining things in an editor will probably mean to use keybindings, since you're using the keyboard to input text anyway. Then you have to memorize the keybindings (or: your fingers have to), and you have to practice using it to the point that it actually becomes more productive than whatever previous routine you had - you have to fight your old habits.
Building these habits is what takes time. The fact that Emacs has a GUI helps with feedback and discoverability, not that much with building habits. When you have finally built these habits, only then can you know if you are more productive. If you aren't you might have to unlearn a lot of your habits (for example by learning modal text editing).
This "master programmer" need to stop abusing his novices, stop resting on his laurels and get back to some learning.