Based on the comments here, it seems that emacs would have to be the editor-in-chief for programmers. I currently use SciTE at work; is it reasonable to, effectively, bill my employer for the time it'll take me to learn emacs? I'm using a lot of the same features that the OP was requesting (multiple files open at once, etc), plus I like syntax highlighting (multiple languages necessary - I'm often developing simultaneously in C++, Pike, PHP, and gnu make, as well as Python).
My current "main editors" are SciTE when I have a GUI, and nano when I don't (over ssh and such). Mastering emacs would definitely take time; I'm not really sure if I can justify it ("Chris, what did you achieve this week?" "I learned how to get emacs to make coffee.")... Chris Angelico -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list