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A robust text editor capable of achieving whatever it is the writer wishes. It supports a plethora of programming languages and other faculties of text editing. Yet its advantages do not stop there. If one wishes to delve into the wizardry of Emacs, they can use it for email, web browsing, organizing ones life and so much more. With all these factors pertaining to the sovereignty of Emacs, only one question remains. What is stopping you from beholding its power?
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Total customizability
Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).
Pro Works in terminal or as a GUI application
You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.
Pro It's also an IDE
You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.
Pro Vi keybindings through Evil mode
Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.
Pro Lisp customizations
With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.
Pro Integrates planning in your development process
You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.
Pro Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")
Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.
Pro Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style
Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.
Pro Great documentation
With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.
Cons
Con Key bindings are Emacs specific
Requires to memorise a lot of new key bindings with control keys.
Con Learning curve is long
While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
Con Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work
If you ever want to lose half a day, start by tweaking your .spacemacs config file.
Con Takes a lot of effort to configure to fit your needs
It definitely can be configured (and even programmed) according to anyone's habits, needs and preferences. For example, imagine a text editor which can handle typesetting and displaying English, Russian, Japanese and Sanskrit text, supporting LaTeX publishing workflow, Common Lisp development workflow, Javascript development workflow, writing down thoughts and to-do tasks and also having a full-featured command line.
But you will have to configure/program it, and it'll in no way be either fast or pleasurable.
Con User interface is terrible
In fairness to Emacs, its original design was conceived in the context of the early 1980's, before there were GUIs, and it's rather good at some things, like flexible ability to bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, it didn't keep up with the times and fails to take advantage of the entire world of GUI design that's revolutionized computer science since then. So Emacs does 5% or what an editor should do quite well, and is surprisingly under-powered and old fashioned at the other 95%. To this day, it lacks or struggles with very basic things, like interactive dialogs, toolbars, tabbed interface, file system navigation, etc., etc. These things are all present in some limited and inept form, but falls far short of current standard of good user interface design. For this reason, Emacs is not recommended to anyone who is under 50 year old, or who needs power user capabilities. For casual, unsophisticated applications by someone who grew up with green screen character based computers, it's probably OK.
Con Documentation is not beginner-friendly
Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, it can take using Emacs for four years as a primary editor and still not be able to figure out how to actually make use of it, and then rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help.
Con Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users
For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange in the begging. However they can be changed easily.
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