I don't think you give Emacs enough credit: sure you can write an Elisp function to do exactly what you need, but you can also usually do it in a few keystrokes

I don't think you give Emacs enough credit: sure you can write an Elisp function to do exactly what you need, but you can also usually do it in a few keystrokes using built in commands. Try VimGolf in Emacs sometime, my experience is that it's usually not too hard to get keystroke counts close to those of the vimmers.