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by iLemming 6 days ago
> Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs

Say what you want, but I wouldn't trade it for any other (non-homoiconic) language. Sure, it won't win the contest of the "nicest Lisp", nevertheless - it's a Lisp, and therefore far better suited for the things Emacs is designed to do.

Have you ever thought why Org-mode, developed and maintained by a handful of people (perhaps fewer people than the React.js core team has) is capable of carrying features that (despite so many brilliant minds) never appeared in any similar products? Like for example, executable source code blocks in different PLs that can pipe data into one another. Even Jupyter can't do polyglot execution with data passing between the languages. That shit doesn't exist in Neovim, or VSCode (where MSFT poured millions of $), or IntelliJ. It exists because Lisp makes it much simpler to design and build such things.

As someone who's been "using" Emacs just like you (without ever writing much Elisp), and also "properly using" it for a long time and having to see both sides, I can assure you - it's absolutely worthwhile to spend some time grokking Elisp. It's not a horrible language. For what it is - it is incredibly flexible. You just don't know what you're missing.