> there's exactly 0 ppl in the world who get paid for writing emacs
I, too, am a free software author in my spare time and not paid for it. Not being paid for a labour of love does not make one exempt from criticism.
>> No localisation
> what do you mean?
The software's user interface and on-line documentation should be implemented in my language, but it's available only in English.
> M-x speedbar
That displays a hierarchical file browser in a separate window, not a list of documents.
>> Configuration is stored as code
> that's the whole point
Occasionally the sheer power is useful because a programming language gives you the power to do things that are not possible or very hard otherwise.
But for the vast majority of cases, most of the time, configuration should be stored in the moral equivalent of an INI file. That way I can process it externally. As it is now, I need to code a parser for elisp and replicate a decent chunk of the emacs runtime environment. That's just too difficult and time-consuming for anyone.
Very much related: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sergey/langsec/occupy/
Turing-completeness should be the exception, not the norm, and only used when actually needed, not for trivial cases.
> long lines […] emacs suddenly becomes dog slow
Many editors have that same problem, so that one doesn't bother me much.