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The primary goals of these apps are not so different, which is why I think comparisons can be meaningful. Consider how they describe themselves:

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing.

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor--and more.

The "and more" speaks volumes about the complexity of Emacs...

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That's interesting. It actually illustrates the sometimes massive difference between "configurable" and "extensible".

Yes. Emacs is a library for writing text editors, and this library also comes with a text editor that runs when you type "emacs".

Programs are much easier to write than config files.

(Incidentally, emacs can be set up to act like vi with all of Emacs' editing commands available. To preempt the inevitable "it's not vim" comments, I'll point out that this tends to confuse vim users, who think that all "vi"s have the same commands that vim does...)

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