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>I'm a writer and I'm really good at punctuation and spelling, do I really need to learn how to write a good story?

Vim is a text editor, emacs is a text manipulator. If you never want to do more than copy a rectangle of text from region a to region b then you don't need more than vim. If you want to write tools that fit your workflow you need to know elisp.

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For readers, don't think this means you need to be an elisp hacker to benefit from emacs. You don't need to write tools -- there are hundreds already written, and installable as packages. I use emacs to edit code, organize projects, and read my email but I rarely touch elisp.

To anyone reading: don't just be a consumer. There are enough projects made for people who just consume. Emacs is still a project run for people who make stuff with it. Please go somewhere else if you have no interest in building anything.

Imo, no harm in being a consumer. I think every hacker is at some level a consumer. But you will get the most out of emacs if you have a habit of becoming less of a consumer.

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