I put melpa in my init file and never thought about it again. You don't need to keep adding it every time. For me, my emacs config is my text editor, and it wo

I put melpa in my init file and never thought about it again. You don't need to keep adding it every time. For me, my emacs config is my text editor, and it works out of the box on any system I install it to. Emacs is often very easy to install, but if I'm going to spend significant time on a machine I'll build it myself, and then my config is a simple git clone away and that's it. I'm working in an exact copy of my own personal text editor that I've built up over many years. My instances of emacs also stay running for weeks at a time. I'll edit the config while it's running. If it's useful I'll commit it and pull it to other instances and run the modifications on them while they're running. It's a completely different way to work than most people are used to and it's liberating.