Oh nooo... It's a 2007 article, but I wish I had been able to go back to that time and shout, "You can use vim! It's okay!" slimv... screen, vim, sbcl in an alternate window with linedit... I think the only real things emacs ever gave me was some intellisense and a slightly enhanced debugger over sbcl's stock debugger. I do not really feel slowed down, though; maybe the problem is that I am not regularly experiencing the speed-ups. :)

But whatever the case, emacs should not be a barrier to Lisp. I might even recommend for new Lisp users: avoid emacs. First learn Lisp. Play around a bit. Most of your environment should be the REPL, and you can copy-paste from your favorite editor. You can use "(ed)" in the REPL. Go from there. Then, later on, try to get emacs to work with your Lisp. Mainly, you will want to experience the interaction, the environment with Lisp. Finally, switch back to vim when you are ready to get your real work done quickly.

I couldn't help the last line... :) Use both editors, depending on your immediate need. But learning Lisp is separate from learning emacs.