@rml The link is catching, and fun to read, but in the end one should compare Emacs against Plan9, for judging the real difference between the two paradigms.

Plan9 supports a real Unix-philosohpy, and in fact one can express complex workflows in it, with minimal effort. It is all composable.

But sadly, Emacs and Unix (Linux, FreeBSD and so on) are two real technologies, while Plan9 (and forks) are far from being mainstream.