Programming

Hackability not on your list? It's the ability to extend and adapt it to my particular needs that, above many other things, means I am too deep into Emacs to even imagine leaving.

Plugins are a very weak substitute that cannot provide that utility, and I notice Helix doesn't even offer plugins. That sword does have the horrendous opposite edge of almost total lack of security, so perhaps I'll regret that one day. There are so many ways I value Emacs that isn't matched by any other text environment that none of the others are even on my radar as possible replacements.

Out-of-the-box experience is very weak on Emacs, but I'm decades past that being a concern to me directly, though it does inhibit newcomer uptake.

Other than that, for me it ticks your boxes while barely scratching the surface of its merits. At least its speed and latency is not something I notice any meaningful benefit when working with something that people praise, like vim. Come to that most of the time like now, typing into a browser text box, I'm not even bothered by latency, and that's way worse than Emacs.

It's biggest failing to me is working remotely when there's significant network latency, where VSCode is clearly superior, but I have neither the time, nor probably the ability, to fix it.