As a 'new' user (less than a year, and still customizing my init file), I can say that I started using Emacs because of org-mode and or-roam. As a chemical eng

As a 'new' user (less than a year, and still customizing my init file), I can say that I started using Emacs because of org-mode and or-roam. As a chemical engineer, my use case is that of being a researcher, programmer, and tinkerer. So, the initial appeal was that of having the ability to version-control, pre-process, and have 'reproducible builds' of my articles or documents (if I add more data, I wanted to be able to update the numbers in the article). And, most importantly... I was drawn in by the capability of using org-roam to try out the zettelkasten methodology (even more so now that there's org-cite). My journey has been to first slowly learn Emacs, then org-mode, and finally I'm starting to learn org-roam, and to learn make my own templates for my zettelkasten implementation. Before all of this, I had tried using Vimwiki and Taskwarrior for productivity and knowledge administration, and I had also used PP and ABP as Markdown preprocessors with Pandoc for documents generation. I still prefer to use Jabref for reference management (mostly for looking up by DOI or ISBN, and pairing with the PDF and epub), but I might try to eventually learn a way to go do that with some of the bibliography managers on MELPA. For coding Python, specifically, I'm still fond of Spyder. But I also intend to transition and try out ways to achieve the same things that allow me to produce high-quality code (with rich documentation). I plan to re-learn modern FORTRAN on Emacs, however. Anyhow, my experience of Emacs onboarding has been that of slowly learning what can or can't be done by searching for random snippets of init file configurations, and reading the Emacs and org-mode user manual. Also, by watching System Crafters' videos, as well as videos from other very talented coders and researchers that have shown how to use org-babel to create reproducible research. Finally, I wanted to add that one of the best-selling points for org-mode and Emacs, is the ability to do so many awesome things just from plain text files, with very low memory and disk footprint (in stark contrast to VSC). One thing I forgot to add is that I'm thankful for all the hard work that has been done in creating a cool ecosystem of software that has resulted from developers scratching their own itch. I have donated once, and will donate again... but I also intend to contribute and help keep free software alive.