Emacs isn't really a text editor, it's a LISP virtual machine with lots of primitives for manipulating text and buffers. Probably the most extendable and configurable software for end users. That's why it has so many incredibly diverse packages. I wish I had spent time getting to know vim, but there's no way I'm switching now. You know, I could never get into emacs. I think it really has more than is necessary for a text editor.
I'm impure I guess, I use both. vim for configuration files and C/python/other algol-type languages/SQL/shell scripts and html/javascript/css polyglots, emacs for lisp/ml-family languages/prolog family languages/TeX/postscript. emacs doesn't really shine on languages with gross grammars, it's easier just to use a dumb editor, but it's a delight when commands like forward/backward-sexp can do something sane.
I use Emacs for text, but my windowing is split between Emacs and Tmux. I'm trying to migrate to Tmux. IMO the real options are, Vim is your editor and POSIX is your IDE, or Emacs is your editor and IDE. I'm trying to migrate to POSIX as IDE. But I really like Emacs' chording and modeless buffers-and-minibuffers model. So, I think my eventual goal is POSIX/Tmux with Vimacs as the editor. With scripts in Lua. Vimscript is nasteh.
I don't think emacs really deserves its reputation of trying to be your whole world. It is happy to work the the tools the rest of the environment provides. shell-command-on-region is handy if you have some text you want to transform and can see how to do it with awk or some other external tool more easily than with elisp, for example.