Comment by Myrmornis

You can make it look modern: get rid of all menus and bars so that there is nothing on screen except for the text you're editing. (e.g. search for minimal.el) It looks indistinguishable from any other modern editor / IDE in zen mode. Menus and bars are not necessary in these sorts of applications if you use then daily -- more efficient and powerful to use the command palette and key bindings.