One of the earliest definitions of 'yak shaving' includes Emacs in its examples! https://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-archive/gsb2000-02-11.html
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Some delightful examples of good compiler error messages in the latest Gleam release: https://gleam.run/news/context-aware-compilation/
Today I learnt that Emacs 28 shipped a context-menu-mode! https://oylenshpeegul.gitlab.io/blog/posts/20230129/
This seems quintessentially Emacs: deeply hackable, but building UI features in an order very different to the mainstream.
One interesting design choice in Emacs that I haven't seen in other editors: reserved shortcuts.
An Emacs extension shouldn't use F5 through F12, or Ctrl-c LETTER. This lets users configure their own shortcuts. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Key-Bindings.html
Does it exist elsewhere? I miss it in VS Code, where e.g. all the Fn keys are already assigned.