For each pipeline and stage I have my own little literate org file

Damn, your verbose description checks all the boxes for a bullshit job.

It’s the always-on REPL that’s the kicker.

(defun invert-case ()
  (backward-delete-char-untabify 1)
  (insert (funcall (if (< last-command-event ?a)
		       #'downcase
		     #'upcase)
		   last-command-event)))

(add-hook 'post-self-insert-hook #'invert-case)

Then C-u C-M-x on invert-case to convey the larger point that emacs is always running within a gdb-like harness. Your buddy will immediately bristle at the prohibitive investment necessary to achieve this pointless and trivial hack, at which point he’ll have truly grokked emacs.

Reply in solidarity.

Reply in solidarity.

that’s like a man trying to explain to a woman how an erection feels, I.e. good luck with it

That’s easy. She just gotta hold her hand out.

When I want to add an automatic garage door, I don’t go on r/ElectricalEngineering and ask how rewarding learning EE can be. I decide wtf I want to have happen, then google accordingly.

Easy there fella and try not to get the pages stuck together.

With that out of the way…

Your life story wasn’t in the way until you put it there.

Your question could be condensed to “use-package is extra bureaucracy when you need to do something non-trivial, e.g., reconciling two packages’ config.”

I found use-package impenetrable as a noob. It only started making sense after I learned the subtleties of minor modes, autoloads, keymaps, custom variables, etc., at which point use-package became superfluous macro alchemy. Judicious use of `eval-after-load’ is all you need and a lot less wtf.

Even if things weren’t broken now, they will be in a couple months. If you take the fragility of emacs to its logical conclusion as I have, you end up writing emacs instead of writing software.

Diddling python is but an intermediary phase to non-coding management, but diddle you must to prove you’ve been in the trenches. Alas many a doughboy fell under emacs’s hypnotic spell and never poked their heads out to see the war’s been long over.

Have tried both and must agree.