Seconded. It's fair to say that almost any imaginable task involving mainly text - including many UIs - could be done better in Emacs.
For instance, for my freelancing I track both tasks and time spent in Org Mode. I wrote myself a little bit of Elisp that, when invoked with the name of a customer, turns my Org Mode agenda into a table with line items for an invoice. I've been copying that into my invoice LaTeX template for a while, but recently I've been working on finishing the Elisp code: the end goal is to have a three-step process:
1) Press a key to generate a table with invoice line items and another with all other data that goes into the invoice.
2) Review the table, adjusting as necessary (e.g. rounding off stray minutes).
3) Press a key for Emacs to take these tables, fill a LaTeX template according to their contents, generate an invoice and file it in appropriate location.
At this point I have 1) and 2) fully working, and 3) missing only the "fill template" and "refile result" steps, which are rather trivial to add.
I'll release this publicly when I'm done. The current solution is somewhat specific to invoicing for services according to my country's regulations, but it shouldn't be too hard to make it universal (I'd love some help here, especially in form of examples of invoices for other countries).
Did I spend more time on it that I would if I used a web tool for invoices? Yes. Do I expect to ultimately get ahead on this solution? Maybe. Is it worth it? The interface (read: an org-mode document invoking some elisp) is already more fluid than any web tool I've ever seen, and I don't need to be on-line - so a huge YES!
For instance, for my freelancing I track both tasks and time spent in Org Mode. I wrote myself a little bit of Elisp that, when invoked with the name of a customer, turns my Org Mode agenda into a table with line items for an invoice. I've been copying that into my invoice LaTeX template for a while, but recently I've been working on finishing the Elisp code: the end goal is to have a three-step process:
1) Press a key to generate a table with invoice line items and another with all other data that goes into the invoice.
2) Review the table, adjusting as necessary (e.g. rounding off stray minutes).
3) Press a key for Emacs to take these tables, fill a LaTeX template according to their contents, generate an invoice and file it in appropriate location.
At this point I have 1) and 2) fully working, and 3) missing only the "fill template" and "refile result" steps, which are rather trivial to add.
I'll release this publicly when I'm done. The current solution is somewhat specific to invoicing for services according to my country's regulations, but it shouldn't be too hard to make it universal (I'd love some help here, especially in form of examples of invoices for other countries).
Did I spend more time on it that I would if I used a web tool for invoices? Yes. Do I expect to ultimately get ahead on this solution? Maybe. Is it worth it? The interface (read: an org-mode document invoking some elisp) is already more fluid than any web tool I've ever seen, and I don't need to be on-line - so a huge YES!