And my reaction was, is it really so yanky? Maybe it's not yanky enough for me to notice. Except for the handling of long lines, that's really slow. I wish it is just yanky.

However I don't understand one thing. Did the author switch to something else or he's still using emacs after this long and convoluted rant?

That’s the good part. The bad part is the lengthy complaining about needing something better than emacs before concluding that emacs is the best.