Riffing off P.F. Hawkins’ post on how he came to love Emacs, let me tell you my story. =)

I wasn’t always an Emacs geek. I remember giving it a shot and finding
out that I much preferred vim or even pico -w. I don’t remember much
else of my pre-Emacs days, though. I do remember the turning point.

While browsing in the library stacks at my university, I found a copy
of Unix Power Tools. It described Emacs, so I decided to give it
another try. I got hooked.

The key thing for me was the exposure to Emacs Lisp. Unix Power Tools
gave all sorts of tips, often accompanied with Emacs Lisp code to put
in your ~/.emacs. So I thought, hey, this might be fun to learn.

I read the Emacs Lisp intro manual. I read the Emacs Lisp manual. Then
I started reading all the source code I could find, frequently
referring to the help files in order to understand something. I
learned about C-h f (describe function) and the ability to jump to,
trace, and modify practically any bit of code in my text editor. My
universe blew wide open.

Several years and several thousand lines of config later, I’ve got a
text editor that fits me like a glove. The people I’ve met, the things
I’ve learned, the crazy ideas I’ve tried… What would my life be
without Emacs? It’s really kinda odd to say that about a piece of
software, but yes: Emacs has changed my life.

What’s next for me? Well, I’m working on that book. I hope it’ll be as
mind-blowing as Unix Power Tools was for me. I hope it’ll help people
discover more and get excited. I’m learning more about the things
people can do with it and I’m playing around with other crazy ideas,
particularly for contact management and personal information
management. I also want to bring this kind of customizability to other
applications. Maybe I’ll try it with Lotus Notes, which I’ll need to
use for work anyway. But Emacs, ah, Emacs… How do I love thee? Let
me M-x count-the-ways!

Random Emacs symbol: eshell-login-script – Variable: *If non-nil, a file to invoke when starting up Eshell interactively.