I'm not talking about lisp or syntax. Learning that is fast. But this is worthless. Learning syntax is fast in any language after a certain point of knowledge.
The juice is in the batteries. The datatypes, the libraries, the environment. Getting to know how to do the most simple things can be very cumbersome in any language, and especially in something old and loaded like emacs.
There is a reason why popular external libs like s.el or f.el are so widely used, and why emacs-projects itself has started modernizing on that front. But those are things you don't know as a beginner.
After spending lots of time customizing various software from macOS to Emacs to Vim to AppleScript to iOS with Workflow, I've come to the conclusion the language and environment are practically irrelevant. There are simply two kinds of people:
1. People who complain about this or that problem in the environment (and say that's why they don't customize it).
2. People who learn and use the environment.
These two groups exist in every one of these communities. There just a fact of life in the world of customization.
(PS: I'm trying to put this in the most neutral way possible, I'm trying not to make any judgements here, personally I'm a customizer, but I'll be the first to admit that I waste a lot of time customizing, and I won't make the argument that customizing is inherently better, just that I prefer it. The point is, the very nature of customizing is what makes it hard, the quirks of the individual environment just don't seem to make much a difference.)
The juice is in the batteries. The datatypes, the libraries, the environment. Getting to know how to do the most simple things can be very cumbersome in any language, and especially in something old and loaded like emacs.
There is a reason why popular external libs like s.el or f.el are so widely used, and why emacs-projects itself has started modernizing on that front. But those are things you don't know as a beginner.