The model of computer use that appeals to me are the one that in theory have a simple system, but the real goal is for you to have a tool that fits your needs. So far it includes the BSDs (Unix), Emacs, and Smalltalk. I've not tried Plan 9 yet.

The more I'm learning more about the above, the more I'm believing that most computer problems has been solved since a long time and the focus should be on improving and creating new tools, not reinventing them.

PS: Spreadsheets are nice too, but they're still lacking the surrounding helpers that would make them great. There's VBA in excel, but I'm thinking about more like dynamic table that's linked to an endpoint or some commands (Unix's ps). I haven't explored tools like Airbase to see if they fit that vision.

Having used emacs for many years, OP's description of "doing things wrong" is exactly the way I use emacs.

I seldom care about the inner workings of emacs and will do the absolute minimum to get it to work the way I want and then move on. I'm reminded over and over again that Emacs patinas really nicely with poorly written elisp in an init file over time.

Case in point, I found that org-export is super slow. After profiling it, I found the slow function, copied it, removed the slow part, and advice-add it right back in there[0]. Might this break some other deeply intertwined behavior someplace else? Probably. Does it matter if I'm the only one using it? Nope.

[0]https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#...

Learning and using Emacs is possibly the activity with the highest ROI over time you can do if you work with text for a living. Maybe even if you don't.

Every time you modify it, you are improving your workflow. Those changes compound over time so that the system is always familiar, which makes interacting with text, the filesystem, network, and anything else you can manipulate with Elisp, that much easier, faster, and more comfortable. What you end up with is a system that is unique to you. A system that does what you want the way you want it, and never changes unless you want it to. In a world where software constantly changes and breaks, where new editors appear and disappear, using your own version of Emacs is incredibly comforting. There are no surprises, no rugpulls, no radical UI redesigns, no sneaky telemetry or tracking, no ads, no nagware, and so on. Anything you don't like can be removed, changed, or improved.

It's not perfect, of course. It's slow, alien in many ways, lags behind in features of modern editors, and has a brutally steep learning curve, especially if you're not familiar with Lisps. It may take you years to appreciate it, and a lifetime to understand it. But that's OK. You don't need to understand all of it. As long as you start the journey, you can learn on the way, and your experience will keep improving.