Different from each perspective! For handsome, smart, educated, awesome, people such as myself, it is a lifetime of treasures, hidden within RSI-inducing key bindings, no matter where on the keyboard one puts C and M.

For leprous, primitivist, stinky, bottom-feeding, monkey-scratchers, it may be a befuddling plethora of options and flexibility that forces the user to form their own opinions regarding the pursuit of goals.

Plus, they both give me something to clean out and start over every ten to fifteen years.

I feel a bit filthy now after realizing my knowledge of named functions to M-x far outnumber the keybindings I've got down pat by a 10:1 ratio.

And yet I don't feel particularly encumbered. Call it a case of the customer only being able to think of a faster horse.

yes, but M-x letter letter TAB can work pretty well and is easy to get down pat.

ido and anything/helm are great for "just close enough" partial matching. Knowing that emacs can do something is just as good as knowing the key bound to the particular command.

Christ I've just tried out helm and it's simultaneously blowing me away and surprising me by exposing emacs builtins I'd never known about. It's far easier to recall objects to act on than named functions.

Yeah, it really helps with maintaining flow while also showing you things you never knew about. OK, sometimes the last part really screws up flow when you see dwim-finish-my-work in the completions list.