works fine = work fine for me after I have spend x hours looking around the net, writing elisp myself. that's the whole problem with lisp. it is not communal, because it does not enforce standards.
Wow, now you have access to the package manager.
Emacs is meant to be customized heavily by its users and the language to do so is Elisp. If you are afraid of that then I don't know what to tell you.
You are quick to condemn all Lisps with an assertion that doesn't make sense to me.
M-x package-install
<package name>
That's with a blank .emacs file on Emacs 24 on a brand new user account I created just to test that for you.
EDIT: (ofc the auto-installing my favourite packages stuff is elisp I wrote)