Indeed! I disagree with people who think vim and emacs are ugly: they have their own nice 8bit-esque aesthetic which I'd expect hackers to like, given that they've chosen to stare at terminals all day (I've rolled my own colorscheme for both vim and emacs). And they make good use of screen real-estate, very important when coding on a laptop.

I haven't tried Evil, in my last emacs phase it wasn't mature yet IIRC - maybe I should give that a go and see if it tips the balance yet again.