As an Emacs user, I have always hated that joke. It's not funny, because, as you said, it is untrue. Emacs is not only a great editor, but it's also a terrible operating system, lacking multitasking and error recovery in particular (although it's getting better).
Jokes are the unit tests of our understanding. Sure, the gag "fails", but it makes the point of the general usability of the infamous Lisp-machine-in-editor-drag.
> Jokes are the unit tests of our understanding.
That’s deep. Never heard it before, it does make sense. Thanks.
Relatively certain that it's original with me. Worth what you paid for it. ;-)
"decent" or "great" are personal emotional responses, they cannot be true or false
(setq decent t)
(setq great nil)
It's a joke, it doesn't need to be true, only to have a kernel of truth like all good jokes. And as a recent Emacs convert after years of vim I must say that kernel is there. The breadth and scope of Emacs is extreme. Talking seriously it's obviously not an OS, but it's not an editor either. It's a framework for people to build their editors on. While vim for example is a great editor right out of the box and even the best evil integrations are not 100% up there with it.