I've been using Emacs for over 15 years and I've never used the default keybindings. I first started using viper mode (vi keybindings) which was and is still is

I've been using Emacs for over 15 years and I've never used the default keybindings. I first started using viper mode (vi keybindings) which was and is still is bundled with Emacs (although I now use evil). And elisp is far from perfect, but I don't think it's much worse than Javascript, Python, Ruby, etc.