I was a huge EMACS fan in college. I even belonged to the Usenet group alt.religion.emacs. :-)

But I can't for the life of me understand why someone would regress to the age of a text-based interface.

I can't either. However I think it is a beautiful thing that someone who enjoys a piece of software and a style of doing things from yesteryear can indulge themselves by creating a project like this.

While this book, and old-school purists, seem to think that modern word processors, research tools, and other applications get in the way of writers,

I haven't needed to use word processing software in a serious way since college. I think modern word processors do get in the way of writers. It is much easier though to do a web search on how to turn the automatic crap off than to relearn EMACS.

I looked through the Github version of the book because, while this does interest me, I had a bad feeling.

Sure enough, chapter 3 (the first real chapter after both the introduction and why emacs chapters) starts by info dumping about buffers, then moves on to several keyboard shortcuts using shortened terminology for each.

Sure, I can get behind "C" standing for "Control", but "M" standing for "Alt"? Then this paragragh, which got me to stop reading altogether:

Each modifier key has an abbreviation, as shown in table tab-modifier-keys. You can combine modifier keys, occasionally leading to awkward combinations, such as C-M-S-a (Control, Alt and Shift a), which requires the nimble fingers of a sleight-of-hand artist to execute smoothly. The shift modifier is usually not indicated because C-M-A is the same as C-M-S-a. The escape key can also act as a modifier key. Pressing escape once is the same as holding the meta key. So typing <esc>-x is the same as M-x.

Look, I consider myself a nerdy computer guy. So does most of my family. I know how to program, use game engines, and can adapt to any software you throw at me. I work with ERP systems daily for a living.

But I can't for the life of me understand why someone would regress to the age of a text-based interface. Modern UI exists for a reason. While this book, and old-school purists, seem to think that modern word processors, research tools, and other applications get in the way of writers, there is something else that gets in the way too: learning how to be creative using tools written before UI design existed as a career.

Programmers are usually not the best at UI design. While they are great at designing systems, like emacs, I do not want to learn the entire mental shift that emacs would require, even if, somehow, it made me more efficient as a writer.

I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but if the goal of this resource is to onboard existing writers into this ecosystem, I think it will fail. The promise is not attractive enough to justify the effort.

I do hope this guide is useful for others, I just can't see how it would work for me.