This approach seems to have served emacs quite well; the config is just some elisp. It’s weird more programmers don’t copy this approach, given how many of them

This approach seems to have served emacs quite well; the config is just some elisp. It’s weird more programmers don’t copy this approach, given how many of them use emacs. Of course, you start out just cargo culting emacs config, so many may not even realize emacs is configured via code. You can also get pretty far with setq functions, essentially just assigning values to variables. But learning to grok and code elisp is when you start to really see emacs’ power.