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Comment by nverno | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it takes work, it's like learning how to dance, draw, or paint. My emacs config is literally 64183 lines of elisp + 2356 snippets (just checked), so I'm not really considering a major editor switch at this point.

I've used VS code as well, it's fine for what it does and certainly much more beginner friendly.

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Imagine what you could have accomplished if you didn't have to spend all that time writing an entire large codebase just to make it usable. It's a false assumption that it should require pointless busywork to be useful. You're never getting back the time you've wasted on writing a config for an obsolete editor.

I love writing elisp, obviously! It wasn't some drudgery for me, it was the whole reason I even got into coding (from using R in emacs) in the first place.

I got into a habit (obsession?) of automating as much as possible everything I repetitively do on a computer by writing elisp. It's essentially my operating system.

ESS is truly a gateway drug.

> Imagine what you could have accomplished if you didn't have to spend all that time writing an entire large codebase just to make it usable. It's a false assumption that it should require pointless busywork to be useful. You're never getting back the time you've wasted on writing a config for an obsolete editor.

Isn't this precisely the kind of "protestant work ethic" that you mentioned just before? If someone enjoys writing ELisp for Emacs, what's wrong with writing 61k lines of it?

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