The more I use Emacs, the more I learn how to use it effectively. I’ve made a number of customizations (two keystrokes runs a lint check on any PHP or XML file I’m editing), and started learning a little about Emacs Lisp.
I recently discovered numbered arguments, which make repetitive tasks much simpler. Today it struck me that negative arguments probably work the same way, and, well, they do. So I can type M– (Meta-Dash) M-3 C-k to nuke the three lines above where the point is. Or M– M-1 M-u to make the word behind point upper-case (Plain M-Dash defaults to an argument of 1, so there’s no need to specify the numeric argument. So any function that moves forward from point can be reversed just by adding M-Dash).
I’m not sure I know why I’m suddenly learning all this stuff about it. I used Emacs for years when I worked for InsynQ, but I never learned stuff like this. And now, in less than a year, I’ve become a veritable Emacs Guru. Perhaps it’s my (relatively) newfound respect for doing things lightly and efficiently.