My theory is that HN loves Emacs because HN loves Lisp.

I'm an anecdatum that did, in fact, learn Emacs b/c of Lisp. B/c of HN. B/c of PG...and strangely enough, I've been working on my emacs skillz all day.

As a kid I took an "intro to programming" summer course based around scheme. If I hadn't felt some echo of familiarity with all the parentheses when I started with emacs, I don't know if I would have become an avid fan like I am today.

I use Emacs and I really like Org mode, but its learning curve is simply too steep given how platform-locked it is.

I use it in vim and I have to say it's not really too difficult if you're used to Markdown. I was actually using it today for the first time to take notes in class and I was amazed by the beautiful documents it produces.