Emacs has its warts, but it's your best choice if you want a serious editor.
Bashing an editor because its support for programming languages whose programmers have chosen other platforms, is not fair. Comparing Emacs to Eclipse or Netbeans when it comes to Java development is not fair, just like comparing Eclipse or Netbeans to Emacs when it comes to Common Lisp development is not fair either.
Using a general-purpose editor instead of a specialized tools means that everything you learn will serve you in every other editing task.
If you are not serious about editing text, then you will be
But, truth to be told, Emacs isn't even an editor: it is an Emacs Lisp interpreter which by default runs a program to edit text.