You can use emacs just for the REPL/debugger, and another editor for editing files. I did this for a couple of years, after previously using CLISP for its REPL

You can use emacs just for the REPL/debugger, and another editor for editing files. I did this for a couple of years, after previously using CLISP for its REPL. You can use the menus for things; the only keyboard shortcut you MUST know is CTRL-G (which if you hit enough times will cancel whatever operation you accidentally started). Alternatively try geany-lisp[1], it was created specifically for those with emacs phobia. There are probably some sharp corners using it, so feel free to file issues if you run into any. It should work with Geany 1.26-1.38; when posting this, I just noticed that there is now a Geany 2.0; I'm assuming the major version bump broke plugins so it may not work anymore. 1: https://github.com/jasom/geany-lisp https://github.com/jasom/geany-lisp