A huge portion of the emacs community seems resistant to any UI improvement. I think it's a counterculture thing.

There is no better UI for text editing that I have ever come across. I'm not sure why so many people are resistant to the idea that emacs has the correct answer to most UI issues. More programs would stand to take lessons from emacs. Emacs is, in its own right, a very successful piece of software. When eclipse was a thing everyone was saying how great it was vs emacs. But eclipse is gone (I think?) and emacs is still GOATed.

There's a particular kind of hubris from non emacs users (especially those who swear by new ides), that us losers are somehow deprived. We are not and don't need your advice. Nothing to do with counterculture. I tried many editors before I became obsessed with emacs.

It's because a lot of us resist the implicit argument that UI changes are automatically improvement when in fact it's just as often regression.