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Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

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Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#1

Post by AnonC »

With reference to the other post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875106), I’m once again fascinated by Emacs and the following it has. I know vi (learned it quite sometime ago) and though I’m not a power user, I can do a lot of things in vi without putting in much effort or searching online for solutions.

So I’m here to ask for resources — text based tutorials, video tutorials and what not — that would help someone grok Emacs (from a novice level) and get into the Emacs way of doing things (including elisp?).

I would also like recommendations on what (package/source) you consider as the best to install on macOS and on Linux.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#3

Post by gct »

If you're currently a vi user, I'd recommend spacemacs (https://www.spacemacs.org/) to soften the learning curve. It comes batteries included (as opposed to a stock emacs install which requires a _lot_ of customization) and uses evil mode (vi keybindings) by default. You can expose yourself to more and more of the emacs way slowly.

Also emacs is largely self-documenting. Learn the keys for querying documentation first thing. You can search for current keybindings, what a given function _does_, etc all live while you're using it.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#6

Post by tams »

gct wrote: post #3

If you're currently a vi user, I'd recommend spacemacs ( https://www.spacemacs.org/ ) to soften the learning curve. It comes batteries included (as opposed to a stock emacs install which requires a _lot_ of customization) and uses evil mode (vi keybindings) by default. You can expose yourself to more and more of the emacs way slowly. Also emacs is largely self-documenting. Learn the keys for querying documentation fi…

Spacemacs is great, albeit slow at times.

On the evil front there is also Doom Emacs (https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs) which is better optimized and is still pretty full-featured.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#7

Post by rwnspace »

This is what I've done the past couple weeks and it's going pretty well:

Start with plain Emacs. Print/write out the popular cheatsheets. Just make sure you know how to exit, access the documentation, and move around the windows/frames/buffers. Get Melpa & install some packages. Play with the config, adding keybindings, figure out hooks and so on. Copy some elisp functions from dotfiles on Github. Spam the documentation command on everything. Get frustrated with how much tinkering you need to do to get the crazy setups you've seen on blogposts. Stay motivated by consuming more content about custom setups. Discover the magic of magit and parinfer and dired. Look up some of the org-mode/PIM heroes on github, usernames: novoid, alphapapa, karlicoss

Install Doom. Tinker with it a bit. Take notes of your learning in an org file. Tinker some more. Go back to plain emacs for a bit. Then try spacemacs. Go straight back to Doom because it's faster and you now understand enough about emacs to be scared of spacemacs' layers.

Below are some links to help you along the way.

http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/blog.html

https://sachachua.com/blog/

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf

https://orgmode.org/worg/orgcard.html

https://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9BcZvQbXU

https://zaiste.net/doomcasts/

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#8

Post by dimitar »

Out of box / vanilla Emacs is pretty confusing doesn't include many popular packages - that is why some pre-made configs are very popular. On the other hand they might overwhelm you with features and very opinionated decisions.

If you want something close to what most users probably have setup and yet still close to vanilla you can give Emacs Prelude a try: https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/

I started with it, tried out the package selection, but then started a smaller config from scratch with what I liked from it.

Also good links: https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide http://emacsrocks.com

I don't believe one should restrict oneself to a single editor, but rather follow a path of least resistance - Emacs is actually the path of least resistance when you want to have a custom editing experience.

Overall I use four editors Emacs, vi, notepad++ and VS Code. Emacs when doing Clojure or any other code so I can have something that is very convenient for me, vi and notepad++ on machines where I don't want to setup a config or where I do only simple text editing and VS Code where I would ocasionally need to install a plug-in, but I don't need to use it often.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#10

Post by stakkur »

I started using Emacs in earnest a few years ago, especially Org-Mode. At first, I tried every customization I came across and loaded up my init file with all the cool mods. But when things went wrong, I had no clue how to fix them.

So after about a year I started over, resetting my config and using Emacs customization over custom elisp writing to get a working init file. It helped me learn a lot. This is the path I recommend: do small customizations using Emacs' built-in features, then learn elisp later.

I learned a lot from this CS prof's videos, and it's a good, practical learning path I'd recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49kBWM3RQQ8&list=PL9KxKa8NpF...

If you're into writing, I maintain a list of resources for writing with Emacs: https://github.com/thinkhuman/writingwithemacs

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