> It is however fully self-documented and interactive.

Unfortunately not true. I've fired up emacs once or twice, and couldn't even figure out how to save a document because it didn't show me how to do that. It might be more documented than vi (but that bar is *on the floor, vi has one of the most discovery-hostile user interfaces ever made), but it's not self-documented enough to just pick up and use with no instruction.

I'm pretty sure that if you have an unmodified install and no .emacs that is configured otherwise, when you start emacs you are prompted with a help screen that includes instructions on using the built-in tutorial. If you do that, you'll learn the basics in about 10-15 minutes. If you skip that, yeah it's pretty different from most other software conventions.

vi is documented

Problem is most people start it the first time by providing a text file instead of firing it on its own and be greeted by the tutorial. I guess that is because they are blindly following another tutorial instead of trying to understand what they are doing.

My opinion is that "self documentation", "Getting started" pages and "tutorials" is a disease. People would actually get up to speed quicker by reading real manuals instead. They are just lured into thinking they will learn faster with tutorials because they get their first concrete results quicker but at this stage the harsh reality is thay they still usually don't know anything.

First time I used vi, I just had my operating system manual on my desk and I quickly learned to open man pages in a separate tty.

That's a fair criticism, although once you learn how to access the documentation and where to look for/expext it I find that most things, including add-on packages and whatnot, can be learned from within Emacs itself just fine. But it does take some knowledge to get to that point in the first place for sure.

I'm pretty sure the built in tutorial shows you how to save a document.

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