I have been using vim for forever and I have dabbled in using emacs throughout the years. Emacs with the evil mode bindings is very comfortable, and I prefer org-mode over markdown (at least for the type of notes I do).
The main thing that stops me from using emacs though is how bloated it is. I don't want the games, web browser, email client, etc. Is there a way to remove those features from a standard install or from source?
Edit: I guess I'll stick with vim for now. It looks like Neovim might be more what I'm looking for instead of Emacs
The majority of those features are written as elisp libraries. They're only loaded if you use them. Unless you're concerned with disk space (why? Disk space is cheap), they aren't the source of your bloat.
The features that are built-in can be changed via the configure script, assuming you don't mind compiling Emacs.
If Emacs feels sluggish, then you're probably loading unnecessary things in your init.el. Or you're on Windows and your virus scanner is fighting with it (that happens to me on my work laptop with Trend Micro).
Edit: org-mode is fairly large and can take a bit to load the first time. Could that be what you're experiencing?
@spauldo @moonsnotreal what do you say to load everything from dotemacs ? :D
I load most things I use in my init.el. I'm not worried about startup times because I rarely restart Emacs.