emacs can be run within a terminal or with a graphical interface for xserver. colors and font-rendering may look different, the graphical version of course does not start inside a current terminal, and i prefer emacs on the terminal because it seems simpler and i would not have to set up xserver forwarding through ssh sessions for example

• start emacs with "emacs --daemon" and open files with "emacsclient -tc" ("t" uses the terminal, "c" creates a new frame)
• this way emacs is not started anew when you open a file for editing
• you could create a bash alias for the command-line in $HOME/.bashrc like so

alias e="emacsclient -tc"

so that you can open files like this

e readme.md

• adaptive-wrap long lines start on the next line with indent
• auto-complete word autocompletion
• corral quickly surround words with characters in emacs
• highlight-symbol highlight and rename the current word throughout the buffer
• smartparens structural editing of bracket expressions. alternative to paredit
• sph-scheme-mode simple scheme mode
• web-mode handles syntax-highlighting for files with mixed languages like html templates
• yasnippet templates

modes i had issues with

• paredit: syntax recognision, integrated auto-format, overriding keybindings, does not work so well with non-s-expression based languages, commands seem more clear and ordered in smartparens-mode
• org-mode: i think it does too much and is therefore too complicated. i find #(link-c-one ("itpn" "syntax" "note")) to be a better note taking format than org-modes asterisk syntax