[jrockway]

What are its benefits, over and above just using vi?

The benefit is that you have an editor that you can extend in Emacs Lisp. (I assume you mean "vim" instead of "vi". If you want a vi-like emacs, use mg. If you want a vim-like emacs, use Emacs.)

[ecaradec]

I tried to use Emacs lisp, several, times, which in my head is almost the same thing as using emacs, but was never able to warp my head around the weird functions naming. Writing the simplest macro seems to require tens of lines of code.

I'm an happy vimmer, but the excitement about emacs makes me jealous. All my tries to use it makes me feel like it's either an endless unintuitive shortcut list OR an editor with very little text control (which I know it isn't ) AND I fail at customizing it

Any suggestion ?

[jrockway]

I tried to use Emacs lisp, several times, but was never able to warp my head around the weird functions naming.

Any suggestion?

Ignore the "weird function naming" until you get used to it. Read the docs to pick up advice on how to do things the Emacs way, so the simplest macros aren't "tens of lines of code". And finally, read the Emacs souce code to see how Emacs does it. Remember, Emacs is written in Emacs Lisp, too!