When I learned emacs lisp back in the mid-80s, I didn't find any requirement to bend my mind or pay any upfront cost. It was a little different from C (and BASI

When I learned emacs lisp back in the mid-80s, I didn't find any requirement to bend my mind or pay any upfront cost. It was a little different from C (and BASIC), certainly, but once I grasped a few basic concepts, it felt extremely elegant and very well suited to the task(s) to which I was putting it. More recently, I've felt that way about Python, and about a few chunks of my favorite blobs of self-written C++.