It can do everything that vim does but the plugin language is better and more rich and so all the plugins are better and more rich.
Why emacs is better than vim. It is not limited to any style of editing but can be extended to be what you want it to be. It has better default extension language. However Emacs not only has the editing tools that Vim has but also expands on them by providing additional features such as email client debugger etc.
The most epic battle of them all. Why you should learn Vim or Emacs now Machete Order To recap by diving into using Vim or Emacs early on youll overcome that learning curve faster. The difference between Vim and Emacs.
I read an evaluation to the effect that Emacs has enough functions but learning and using it is too complicated VIM is simple and practical. I havent wrote any vim extension in PythonRuby but I can. However Emacs not only has the editing tools that Vim has but also expands on them by providing additional features such as email client debugger etc.
Emacs is an environment that has many well-designed applications. Emacs packages are generally significantly better than their vim equivalents imho. Vim is made especially for text editing and the defaults reflect that if you dont mind modal editing and I love it.
You can pick up different tools yank pieces. Vim is known to have a much steeper learning curve than Emacs. Vim is just a text editor and good at it.
However it is highly customizable and includes a large number of features as it is essentially an execution environment for a Lisp program designed for text-editing. After that the other practical difference was Emacs modes. They make your life tremendously easier when editing XML.