Comment by BeetleB
4 hours ago
I'm going to give a counterpoint to this (common) take.
I was an Emacs power user for almost a decade before I learned Emacs Lisp. I knew just the bare minimum to populate my .emacs file, and occasionally copied others' config snippets.
No need to rush into learning Elisp.
You just unironically proved my point. Who's got a decade to spare, when they can wield the power in just a couple of months?
> Who's got a decade to spare, when they can wield the power in just a couple of months?
I was a power user within months - a year tops. I didn't say it took me 10 years to become a power user.
Ever since I learned Elisp (it's been many years), I wouldn't say my expertise and abilities has grown exponentially. It is merely an incremental improvement. It definitely is nice that I can now code away annoyances, but it's not the game changer people make it out to be.
> I wouldn't say my expertise and abilities has grown exponentially
Things always look easier only after you solve a problem, aren't they?
That is a known as hindsight bias (also called the "knew-it-all-along" effect). Once you've solved a problem or seen the solution, it seems obvious and you tend to overestimate how predictable or easy it was.
There's related phenomena known as the curse of knowledge - difficulty imagining not knowing something once you know it.
"The Mythical Man-Month" - discusses on why we underestimate complexity, it explains the psychology behind it.
There's also "forgetting the beginner's journey" or the "fourth stage" of learning where skills become so automatic you can't easily explain them.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence