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 diale

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.