Exactly. This lets configurations accrete over time and ultimately get to a place where you don't have to think about your changes and they "just work" for you.
I think emacs is more likely to have breaking changes, but I haven't used it a terrible amount, so I can't really say.
> I think emacs is more likely to have breaking changes
Matter of fact - stuff in Emacs breaks all the time. Frankly, Emacs simply defies any logic - sometimes you feel it shouldn't work at all, yet it does.
You see, when talking about differences of configuring Emacs and any other text editor or IDE, one has to understand - there's really no "configuration" in common sense. Emacs is a Lisp environment where you run your programs. You can download, import, and use other programs. Very often those programs "talk" to each other. Sometimes (of course), the line of communication breaks, and then you have to step in and patch them up so they can continue working together.
That's the biggest headache and confusion for beginners. They shy away from learning Emacs Lisp, and they think they can focus on learning Emacs fundamentals by using some "minimal configuration".
But only after understanding the basics of Lisp - structural editing, evaluating s-expressions, macro-expansion, etc., one could appreciate the enormous capabilities of Emacs. And when something breaks, it's quite simple to spot the problem and put a workaround.
I think emacs is more likely to have breaking changes, but I haven't used it a terrible amount, so I can't really say.