I can't say that I've run into this exact issue, or even exactly what the issues have been that I've run into with Emacs, but I know I've spent many hours reading instructions, following tutorials and generally just trying to get a basic emacs/lisp setup running. It's really difficult to do. I think I had a partially working Clojure setup, but then I tried to make it support Common Lisp in addition, and things completely broke down.
I'm not claiming to be a genius level programmer here, but I don't think I have to make that claim either. There's something seriously wrong with Emacs when an experienced programmer has serious issues setting up a basic development environment.
For comparison's sake, I hit "comfort-level" with Vim within two weeks, including a fully customized .vimrc, colour files and keyboard navigation. After a month of using Emacs I was somewhat comfortable with the keyboard shortcuts for basic navigation, but didn't know how to do several things that I could do in Vim. I also had no idea how to add syntax highlighting for language X - managing only to get it working for one dialect of Lisp and nothing else. Ah, and installing from ELPA had a nice tendency to show me error messages instead of actuall installing anything.
Bah, sorry for the rant. It just frustrates me when I hear about Emacs and how great it is, and I totally get on-board with it, but then it's just this fustercluck of configuration hell that never ends well.
> I think I had a partially working Clojure setup, but then I tried to make it support Common Lisp in addition, and things completely broke down.
This is due to the SLIME developers' insistence on making everyone run from CVS trunk. I wish I were joking, but they really seem to have no interest in creating stable release packages, so I have to go in and try to make it work without their cooperation.
Interesting.
For what it's worth, I plan to give Emacs another go pretty soon here, but I'll be sticking with Common Lisp. I'm kind of done my courting period with Clojure.
Emacs + Slime for CL should be a piece of cake as long as you don't insist on using your distribution's packages. Mail me (see profile) when you run into any problems and I'll help you out.
I'm not claiming to be a genius level programmer here, but I don't think I have to make that claim either. There's something seriously wrong with Emacs when an experienced programmer has serious issues setting up a basic development environment.
For comparison's sake, I hit "comfort-level" with Vim within two weeks, including a fully customized .vimrc, colour files and keyboard navigation. After a month of using Emacs I was somewhat comfortable with the keyboard shortcuts for basic navigation, but didn't know how to do several things that I could do in Vim. I also had no idea how to add syntax highlighting for language X - managing only to get it working for one dialect of Lisp and nothing else. Ah, and installing from ELPA had a nice tendency to show me error messages instead of actuall installing anything.
Bah, sorry for the rant. It just frustrates me when I hear about Emacs and how great it is, and I totally get on-board with it, but then it's just this fustercluck of configuration hell that never ends well.