The difference is that in the first case, the tools make sure to ask me for many details about what I want - this makes going through the dialog slower as I have to think about each option. In the case of Emacs I can totally customize what I want to happen based on the most minimal input possible.
This is one of the best explanations I've seen for why I might want to use emacs. It lets you optimize YOUR most common tasks, while the boundary cases are still doable with a little extra work. Tools based on dialogs and "wizards" make ALL cases equally easy, but don't fully optimize the most common cases.
I don't use emacs myself, but now I'm more inclined to study it. I do agree with Philip that (to paraphrase) TextBasedTool+StrongProgrammer beats VisualTool+WeakProgrammer every time. I do Java and SQL development in a Wintel environment. My database model is a meticulously commented text file containing SQL statements. My object model lives in the javadocs for my classes. Printf's solve most of my debugging problems. This approach has been very successful for me across platforms and languages.
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This is one of the best explanations I've seen for why I might want to use emacs. It lets you optimize YOUR most common tasks, while the boundary cases are still doable with a little extra work. Tools based on dialogs and "wizards" make ALL cases equally easy, but don't fully optimize the most common cases.
I don't use emacs myself, but now I'm more inclined to study it. I do agree with Philip that (to paraphrase) TextBasedTool+StrongProgrammer beats VisualTool+WeakProgrammer every time. I do Java and SQL development in a Wintel environment. My database model is a meticulously commented text file containing SQL statements. My object model lives in the javadocs for my classes. Printf's solve most of my debugging problems. This approach has been very successful for me across platforms and languages.