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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

I... uh... am almost in some sense ashamed to admit this, but I've been using emacs for about 23 years now, and I still don't program elisp. I can just about diagnose errors in my not-very-complicated .emacs with a bit of googling, and that's about it. I've read about it, and I understand the basics, but I know nothing about the APIs and have no experience in it past one-liners.

It probably is a good idea to learn it, in some sense, and you'll probably have to pick up at least the basics that I've picked up, but it's definitely not a commitment to learn a new language.

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Same here, but not ashamed about it at all. If there's something I need to automate or change in emacs, it's just a web search away and I can find the elisp that I need to add into my config files.

I'd consider myself an advanced user of emacs, but that still doesn't mean that I have any motivation to write any new emacs modes or functions, since just about everything I could ever want already exists!

I got good at elisp in my first years of emacs 30 years ago. Tons of customizations. Then I let it go. I remember the basics but I never write any serious script. No need for that. There are so many packages ready to be installed and Stackoverflow. The solutions are already there so I can concentrate on my job.

Using Emacs without knowing eLisp is like owning a race car but always driving it in first gear.

I can deal with that metaphor, if "a race car in first gear" is still faster than a lot of other cars.

Plus, it's the same race car. I've programmed half-a-dozen languages quite seriously in emacs, and I'm not changing editors the whole time. So, while I may not know elisp, I do know a fair amount about emacs and don't have to relearn how to do a lot of things in a new IDE every three years... or, worse yet, discover that entire features are missing because "nobody" has ever used an editor that had them. (I'm not sure I could live without macros of some sort in an editor.)

I would say it's more like driving a race car but - provided you use one of the many configurations or frameworks ala Spacemacs/Doom out there - having the gears automated by the car's system.

An experienced racer would be much better off with driving in manual, but for a beginner or someone never expecting to push the car to its limits the automated gears are plenty good enough.

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