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

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

#61

Post by alexbanks »

smg wrote: post #41

The biggest difference between Emacs and any other editor is that instead of thinking about Emacs as an editor you need to think of Emacs as a programable workflow enabler. Using Emacs without learning Elisp is like carrying a bike on your shoulders instead of riding it. Once you get to the place where you can confidently write Elisp to solve your problems, you will miss Emacs deeply when you have to use any other ap…

It's interesting to me that the top two comments (at the time of writing this) are fundamentally opposite advice. Yours, to customize Emacs, vs. the second, to basically not customize it at all.

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

#62

Post by michaelmrose »

weaksauce wrote: post #50
kalium_xyz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also just run evil mode for the vi emulation (its what spacemacs does), spacemacs is the best emacs IDE though IMHO.

you definitely can use evil mode but you will find a lot of edge cases where you have to configure something in some modes to behave sanely whereas with spacemacs they have usually done all that legwork of anything you want to use.

You can get a lot of help with evil-collection

https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection

Which provides evil bindings for a lot of modes

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

#63

Post by squirrelmaker »

kabdib wrote: post #17

Emacs user here, it's been my go-to editor for about 40 years. I have a few customizations, not many. My .emacs file is 63 lines long, doesn't include any other files, and mostly just tweaks some key bindings and turns off features that I don't like. The only modes I use are built-in ones (e.g., C-mode, auto-wrapping text mode, etc.). I can't write elisp without a reference manual, and I think that's okay. I suggest:…

Was it an acoustic modem? Just adds to the joy.

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

#64

Post by ludwigvan »

1- Understand that it is a programming environment, composed of functions, commands and variables; and all of these are documented, which you can get via `C-h f`, `C-h v`.

2- Any key combination you touch translates to those commands, so `C-h k` which shows you the actual command is key. Learn the commands behind the keys and mix and match to suit your style. Read http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-save-excursion.ht... to get the overall idea. Use smex or helm's helm-M-x to be able to call the commands without remembering their names fully. You can also use apropos to search for commands, but smex or helm is much easier. This way, you don't need to learn that many shortcut keys.

3- Define a shortcut key to open your .emacs file so you can define new commands without extra effort. Keep it to a single file in .emacs.d dir to make things easier. Too many files make things harder to maintain for me.

4- Practice on your elisp skills on `ielm`.

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

#66

Post by kalium_xyz »

weaksauce wrote: post #50
kalium_xyz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also just run evil mode for the vi emulation (its what spacemacs does), spacemacs is the best emacs IDE though IMHO.

you definitely can use evil mode but you will find a lot of edge cases where you have to configure something in some modes to behave sanely whereas with spacemacs they have usually done all that legwork of anything you want to use.

You also have doom which is just evil and not space centric AFAIK

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

#68

Post by MrPowers »

vpEfljFL wrote: post #57

As you mentioned you're comfortable with vi, Spacemacs probably should be a good start although I think it kind of overloaded. Doom emacs should be a better/lighter option to start with till you ready to create your own edition. I suggest don't go full inside but start slowly incorporating emacs into your workflow. If you write code then using emacs only for git via magit for the first couple of weeks should be a goo…

I'd suggest starting with the Kinesis and then trying Emacs. I tried Emacs multiple times on "regular" keyboards and it never made sense to me. It wasn't till I tried it with the Kinesis keyboard that I was able to fall in love with the keybindings. Great comment.

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

#69

Post by mullikine »

The easiest start-kit I found to be spacemacs. discover plugins through tapping around which-key.

I've been using emacs for about a year now. My config is stable at 1506 emacs packages. It runs on 6 different emacs distributions. Some would say my setup is bloated. With a 2 minute startup time, I need emacsclient. It's important to remove any impediments to learning as possible. Any weird keyboard problems, or waiting times you should try to eliminate. It takes an obsessive kind of discipline, like using batons on homeless people to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Every day I check the emacs reddit and search melpa for packages with particular keywords in their names. Every time I hit a bug I try to solve it.

Run multiple emacs instances so if you break something, at least one emacs still works. I recommend using 'lispy' for emacs lisp, but until you have learned that I recommend using vim for writing elisp. You kinda have to make key bindings to learn new emacs packages.

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