What made me switch to VS Code (after using Emacs for 30+ years) was that I got tired of just how much of an easter egg hunt Emacs is for me now.
Setting up Emacs reasonably for Go development just isn't even close to being straightforward. And with Go, go tooling and Emacs continually being changed, any setup that works will eventually stop working and you have to try to figure out how to rewrite your configuration. This happens often enough that even someone like me, who really, really didn't want to ditch emacs, eventually may do so.
I appreciate all the work that has gone into Emacs, but the feeling I get is that the project lacks enough active developers and/or the focus misses the mark. I see version numbers going up - I don't see visible improvement.
The goalposts moved. They are farther afield. Expectations of what an environment has to offer have gone up. If a decent developer experience isn't an understood priority, then Emacs isn't going to be very attractive for new developers. And it may have problems both attracting new users and developers and retaining new developers.
(That being said: VS Code is apparently going through a rough patch where things have gotten really buggy if you use it for Go development. So it isn't like VS Code is a magic bullet)
Setting up Emacs reasonably for Go development just isn't even close to being straightforward. And with Go, go tooling and Emacs continually being changed, any setup that works will eventually stop working and you have to try to figure out how to rewrite your configuration. This happens often enough that even someone like me, who really, really didn't want to ditch emacs, eventually may do so.
I appreciate all the work that has gone into Emacs, but the feeling I get is that the project lacks enough active developers and/or the focus misses the mark. I see version numbers going up - I don't see visible improvement.
The goalposts moved. They are farther afield. Expectations of what an environment has to offer have gone up. If a decent developer experience isn't an understood priority, then Emacs isn't going to be very attractive for new developers. And it may have problems both attracting new users and developers and retaining new developers.
(That being said: VS Code is apparently going through a rough patch where things have gotten really buggy if you use it for Go development. So it isn't like VS Code is a magic bullet)