Understood.  

You have to remember emc started as a nist (us government) machine controller to standardize machines for government contracts using current computer technology.   When the hobbyist got a hold of it - they made a canned inflexible controller (unless you’re a programmer) (bdi emc1).  A bunch of the developers saw a way they could improve it by adding the flexibility to be able to control almost any type of machine.  Using the hal model that was spear headed byJohn Kasunich (jmkasunich on #emc irc) this made emc very flexible.  You can hook virtual pins from from motion/io to external pins - run them thru hal modules like PID, Stepgen, inverter, dbounce, encoder among other objects. You also have access to a software ladder logic (classic ladder) integrated into emc2.  Again - this make emc2 very configurable.  You can control things as simple as a diy router all the way up to machining centers with tool and pallet changers.

But 

This make it also complicated.  You need to read thru the manual and hal information to understand how it all works.  The stepconf is an attempt to make simple stepper machines easy to configure.  It is brand new.