I beg to differ! These editors are extremely popular because of lack of better alternatives and because of the great conservatism (it doesn't matter that there might be something better, I have already mastered this one tool). I give you Sublime Text as an example - it has exploded in popularity simply for its great user interface. A lot of the engineers I have met, that used Emacs or Vim, have either never heard of Sublime or never tried it. If they were curious enough to give me 30 seconds of their attention, they all agreed "this thing might come in useful". Some I have converted.

The same thing is true for Word, Excel, for that matter Windows, Photoshop. These are not the best user interfaces for the main bulk of their target market - they are simply dominating because of lack of better alternatives and/or the great conservatism.

My point is, just because you target power users, your software should not get away with a poor interface. As another example, look at the crippled tool we use every day - the shell (csh, bash) and compare it with something like fish (that is far from ideal but makes at least a bit of progress).

The video is the best thing I have seen on HN in long while.