Learning emacs won't automatically give you a huge productivity boost the way learning vim does. Vim is this blazing fast editor; it's been designed from the ground up to be good at editing text. If your goal is to increase your productivity, I'd say invest time learning vim advanced features, like jumps, macros, registers, and the plethora of other things I don't know about.
Emacs is not about speed. It's about control. It's a fully customizable environment to manipulate text. You can use it to edit prose, code, scientific formulas, but also emails, IRC/Jabber clients, clients for virtually anything with a REST API. Here are some of the use cases that make my work easier using emacs:
+ Evaluating pieces of code at once. I write a lot of Python. Most REPLs out there allow editing of one line at a time. emacs allows me to fire a python interpreter and evaluate regions (multiline function definition, or data structure) at once. Similar features exist for other "dynamic" languages.
+ Better code review workflow. I receive code review requests via email immediately inside emacs. I can play with the diff files, the source files. I can make modifs or run the code without leaving my editor. And since the code review system has an HTTP API, I can even post my comments and votes back.
+ Org-mode (http://orgmode.org/). I would use emacs for this module alone. It's a note taking system that can easily transform into an agenda, todo lists, memo, document markup, tables (oh, the org-mode tables!), ...
Basically, to answer your question: I think you'll get a lot of benefits from emacs if you enjoy customizing it and integrating it to your workflow. If you don't like spending time customizing and prefer something that will just make you write text (well, code and configuration files) faster, stick to vim and spend this time learning advanced commands.
And what do you use for code review workflows?
Emacs allows you to use basic commands like any other editor, but to be blazingly fast you need to use the controls explained in the tutorial (plus some extra stuff that you can pick up later). The tutorial is not optional if you want to be blazingly fast.
It's probably true that if you come from vim to Emacs that you won't get a huge editing boost as such, but I think the reverse is probably also true.
Vim or Emacs are really powerful tools that will serve you well over your entire career, so getting adept at them will pay dividends. It's similar to learning how to touch-type, or typing with a faster WPM, in that it's not a pre-requisite to becoming a good and productive developer but it certainly helps.
Emacs is my personal favorite editor, and I've found that the more adept I get at using it, the easier it is for me to get into "flow" and be productive. I don't use my brain's CPU cycles to fumble around trying to manipulate text as much, since through repetition and muscle memory I can work at it effortlessly (compare that to someone who has to two-finger peck while programming).
Similar to other powerful tools though, becoming good takes practice and a time investment. But I would argue that the initial upfront investment will pay off in the long run.
TL;DR: Yes, absolutely. Learning Emacs (or Vim/SublimeText/Eclipse if that's your choice) well will definitely boost your productivity in the long run.
The way you can refactor whole projects at once etc is amazing. (This is partly related to Java being static and uncool as well. : )
(verbose typing is uncool, though)
But it's also useful for things like bash or OSX interfaces too, since they use the same common keybinding scheme.
The emacs keybinding are used a lot of places eg: ^a to begining of line ^e to end of line is used everywhere (even the url bar of firefox/ chrome).
No. Although I first used emacs roughly 22 years ago so my memory might be rusty, the learning curve was extremely steep. Its not a GUI app with low maximum performance but very short learning curve, its more like something you'll have to mess with for a month to year to wrap your brain around. Its like learning dwarf fortress vs angry birds. In the very long run you'll probably like DF more, but not for the first day / week / month.
I beg to disagree. I learned me an emacs around the same time period (mid 90's). I don't remember the learning curve to be that steep. I started by doing the tutorial. If you download a GUI emacs (e.g. from http://emacsformacosx.com/ ), and open the program, you'll see a mouse clickable invitation to take a tutorial. Do this. Don't take shortcuts. Just spend the one or two hours and go through the entire tutorial complete with practice exercises.
Or if that's intimidating, start by reading this gist:
You can "rise above" by using emacs but its going to take a lot more than learning a different keystroke to scroll the screen. Learning all the features of your language mode, its debugger integration, integrated refactoring tools, project tool integration, it all takes time, and those are the areas where you get huge productivity gains when you put in the time.
I agree you are correct that the FIRST step is the tutorial but that won't provide any performance gains over any other bare text editor.
I also do a lot of iOS development, and, I do 95% of editing in Xcode, and 5% in Emacs. A nice thing about Emacs is, if you're on a Mac, is that Mac OS uses most of Emacs' movement keybindings, so even when I'm in Xcode (or any other app for that matter), I can still use my Emacs muscle memory.
I'm not that young; 6 years ago I was 30, and I'm very happy I decided to learn Emacs; no regrets. It's still paying dividends today and will continue to for the foreseeable future.
Also check my other guides, even just to see Emacs's awesomeness: http://tuhdo.github.io/
I'd agree that evil mode is quite nice, and emacs seems like something useful to know. It really depends what you prefer. I'm trying out emacs specifically for the formatting plugins as vim seems to fall behind in that regard.
What you should perhaps be more concerned about is whether you will be able to go back to a plain text editor, once and if you choose to go down this rabbit hole..