I disagree. People often tend to forget that Emacs has a very long history and what may appear to a newcomer today to be bad design more often than not, has a logical (even if historical) reason.

It is of course a classic design dilemma when porting something across dozens of different systems and supporting something across many decades, whether to try to adapt to the whims of a new target or to stick with a common core. Emacs will never be the Microsoft Notepad of the common computer user and we, the long time Emacs users, tend to see the stability of the interface as an advantage.