I hoped the article would be not about look-and-feel, but about building a stripped-down version of Emacs without obsolete parts like TRAMP or LEIM (because there are system-global subsystems for those nowadays), or maybe even trying to tear chunks from MULE.

In a perfectionist "must be a pure gem, no imperfections allowed" sense, ton of seemingly unnecessary libraries is the only thing that actually bothers me about The Editor.