[yason]

Learning Emacs versus another editor is like learning to compose versus learning the names of the notes of the keys on a piano. When I jumped in in the early 90's I--having already been convinced of Emacs' superb capabilities--just made the decision to not use anything else than Emacs and stick to that.

I guess that with a program so endless as Emacs, there's no other way.

First I never looked back and then I never wanted to look back.

The first days were painful because there was so much I hadn't bumped into yet but soon the later days were much easier. The same analogy held for the coming weeks, months, and years. I still learn new stuff that Emacs has but in 95% of what I do with it I don't even think about anymore. That's the payload I've accumulated in nearly 20 years of Emacs.

It's all in my spine somewhere and I'm always amazed when I occasionally use another editor that it doesn't do things that Emacs does, or rather that it doesn't work with me as Emacs does.

I also customized Emacs heavily in the beginning years but now I've been trying to not touch anything unless absolutely necessary. In other words, first I made Emacs grow closer to me and now I've grown closer to Emacs. I can work up another .emacs from scratch in a couple of days, fixing all remaining settings that I've accustomed to, on the fly as I bump into them. There aren't that many left.