Learning to use a text editor(or atleast trying) is easier than learning to touch type but anyway people kept touting the power of Emacs and how extensible it was and I decided to give it a shot. On trying Emacs, I loved features such as being able to run a shell, a really good python mode and the extensibility using .emacs files.

However since Emacs has a lot of key sequences for navigating between text, modifying text and doing pretty much anything involves not using the mouse, it got really frustrating looking at the keyboard every 2 seconds courtesy my typing illiteracy. So I decided to learn touch typing just so that I could use Emacs properly.

One interesting little tidbit.. I had tried around 3 or 4 times previously to learn touch typing but failed. However after I started learning both Emacs and touch typing simultaneously, I succeeded. So I guess the relation is somewhat symbiotic, learning to touch type helped me learn emacs and vice versa.