Emacs has a steep learning curve and that's good. You need a moat to keep the barbarians from destroying your kingdom.
That's probably how most VS Code users feel about learning Emacs after reading about it on HN :)
For people who have used $EDITOR for 20+ years there's little incentive to change to something else, but if you want to bring in fresh eyes to your project so that there'll be enough people around in another 20 years to maintain the whole thing it behoves you to think about attracting those people.
Sane defaults and being more approachable is a good way to do that.
Does emacs even offer anything like `vimtutor`?
Yup. And iirc it's more discoverable than vimtutor because it's on the first page of the vanilla Emacs
https://i.stack.imgur.com/egD8V.jpg
That is the splash page that hasn't changed much since 2000. Reading the helpfully highlighted first menu entry do you think that Emacs has a tutorial?
Users who can't even be bothered to read the text in front of them are not an asset to a project that doesn't charge them, they are a liability since they force the project in stupid directions. The death of firefox is a perfect example.
The thing that Emacs should focus on the future is true concurrency. Nice to haves would be a non-gtk gui, adding scheme scripting support and releasing a space cadet mechanical keyboard.
The mechanical keyboard community will probably get there first.
From a quick search, I've found this [1], which goes a bit beyond the original Space Cadet keyboard.
Here's someone recreating the Space Cadet keyboard key caps -- i.e. the plastic covers for the keys, not the actual keyboard. This is a more modern profile (key shape), rectangular/cylindrical similar to modern keyboards rather than the spherical top of the key like in the 1970s and 1980s.
It might give you an idea how expensive a custom keyboard would be.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechGroupBuys/comments/j3pmmn/gb_gm...
While preconfigured Spacemacs, Doom and others are doing a good job in turning emacs into OOB editor, they still require some tinkering with lisp, while in vscode you just install plugins and you are done.
Most of the emacs community radiates that same attitude, which is one reason it stays where it is and doesn't flourish.
Emacs is in that unfortunate position that you can learn the shortcuts and 'use' it for months before you even see your first bracket and end up thinking the brackets are the problem, not you.
The number of times I've heard people demand the scripting language change to python...
Someone that thin skinned would demand that the project accommodate them, try to take it over and then run it to the ground.
After all it's not like Stallman didn't become homeless because of people like that.