[lottin]

It's true that you MUST learn Elisp to use Emacs effectively. That said, the thing with Lisp is it's a pretty simple language, and once you know one Lisp dialect learning another one isn't a big deal. As far as Elisp is concerned, you don't need to learn a vast library either. Most of the time you'll be setting variables, hooks and occasionally writing some small function.

[geokon]

right, that's very true - it's in a lot of ways just a mental block. Though it's not likely, I still want to keep the option to reuse my code in a different context and a DSL precludes that