the quote is arguably the most important part of lisp as it allows symbolic processing (without that macros and eval wouldn’t be a thing I reckon).

I’ll try to provide a weird explanation. Consider this:

five = 4

So is this a four or a five? The value is four but it’s assigned to a symbol “five”. When dealing with values, “five + five” will be 8. However, what if I don’t care about the values (at least yet)? then I’ll be manipulating the expression in terms of the elements (symbols) themselves and not what they signify (values). At that level, we don’t even know what + means. You assume it’s a math operation because of the semantics you’ve been taught. for all we know it may be something else entirely, like a variable (did you know that some languages allow you to use chinese glyphs or norse runes for variables?).

So quote operator tells lisp that you don’t want the “thing” to be evaluated into the value behind it. (quote five) isn’t “4”, it’s literally the symbol “five”. (quote (+ 1 2 3)) isn’t 6, it’s a list of +, 1, 2, and 3. You can eval that list so lisp executes it: (eval (quote (+ 1 2 3)). Also consider: (quote (1 + 2)) is perfectly fine, it’s just a list, but you can’t evaluate it as lisp doesn’t have a function or operator named 1 (although you may be able to define it yourself)

It was a bit of a weird explanation but i hope it helps

This

In my experience, you don’t really need to know much elisp (if any) to be able to configure your editor unless you’re building your own plugin. Once you have a specific problem, you just Google and use Emacs internal docs.

That said, elisp has an interesting trait: variables are dynamic by default. It’s quite different from other languages so it may be amusing to learn more about (if you do find that interesting, check out PicoLisp)

offtopic, what data do you store? Photos? I was always curious about people who use a lot of storage

well, thats too ambitious. But whatever

i think the real competition here is vim.

vscode is a user-friendly editor that you just start using as a no brainer. You unlikely to learn more as you go (maybe a couple of shortcuts). So you get what you see pretty much

vscode is like a lego set. Emacs is more like a piece of marble. Harder to work with but has so much more potential.

and btw, vscode is the minimalist here