I once saw Emacs described as a "thermonuclear text processor" and I find that description fitting. Emacs is a beast. It has a really steep learning curve. But much the same way the *nix in general can have a steep learning curve, after you use it for a long enough time you grow to appreciate the raw power available over the other offerings. Some even take it up a level "Emacs IS my operating system". There are too many quirks with that for me to accept on that part though. I know I can run a shell terminal in Emacs but I never do, mostly because of how the environment seems to get screwed up just enough to turn me off.
Anyhow, I sometimes can't believe how utterly craptastic it is make Emacs look pretty by way of fonts and such. It's a freaking mess. And there is the invariable quirk with it as well. Thankfully the internet comes to the rescue. What I love most about the web coupled with a good search engine is that I often enough am able to find the workaround to a problem I'm having. Not easily some of the time but it puts a whole host of things within the realm of possibility. Most recently I wanted to correct the annoying issue of Emacs not using the default font when opening a new frame via C-x 5 2. Found the snippet of code I needed to add to my .emacs file almost immediately.
Only thing I really regret about using Emacs as much as I do is never having learned Lisp. It's always been on my someday list.
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