This is argument shows up in most threads on Emacs - "sure, it's powerful, but that is actually a flaw since it takes such a long time to master". The problem w

This is argument shows up in most threads on Emacs - "sure, it's powerful, but that is actually a flaw since it takes such a long time to master". The problem with this position is that you don't need to master Emacs to make productive use of it. No-one has mastered all of Emacs. That's not the point. The basic text-editing functionality in Emacs is completely discoverable via the menus. If it takes you 30 seconds to learn how to use Notepad, it will take you 60 seconds to learn how to do all of the same things in Emacs. At that point, your productivity on Notepad has plateaued, but you've just scratched the surface with Emacs. After that point, Emacs rewards careful study. It may be faster to find a quick fix to a specific question with Google, but investing 30 minutes with the built-in tutorial will bump you up from Notepad-like productivity that will pay off the time invested in a few days. Most proficient Emacs users don't get that way from devoting weeks of study before they start actually using it. It's an incremental process. You (quickly) get to basic familiarity. After a while, you notice some tedious thing you'd like to automate. So you find the next trick or tool to add to your repertoire, and now you're a little bit more efficient in your coding. Repeat the process over a few years, and slowly you 'discover' more of the power that's available to you. It's true you often get the "I didn't even know you could do that" response in this process. But after you've run into that a few times, you internalize a more powerful idea: "I know I can do this, and now I will find out how".