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Thoughts on Learning Emacs

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Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#7
post #2

Oo boy! I hope no one brings up the comparison to Vi now. (Ooops!) Let the holy war begin.

How times have changed. I have discovered that we are friends with vi & Klingons, and we are at war with eclipse, netbeans, and the borg.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#8
The hardest thing about getting started with emacs is finding information about getting started with emacs. You get the "learn emacs in 10 minute" guides that show you how to open a file, and move up a line, and then after that everything goes off a cliff into installing packages and writing lisp.

It's hard to get a sense for the "overview" of what emacs is about - what you should learn first, how to customize your setup, and where you should go next. It feels like walking in to a party full of really really really smart strangers.

Like a party full of smart strangers, once you get going it's fine... but most people don't stick around that long.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#9

The hardest thing about getting started with emacs is finding information about getting started with emacs. You get the "learn emacs in 10 minute" guides that show you how to open a file, and move up a line, and then after that everything goes off a cliff into installing packages and writing lisp. It's hard to get a sense for the "overview" of what emacs is about - what you should learn first, how to customize your s…

One great source of Emacs knowledge: http://www.emacswiki.org/

I'm sure there are other info sources, but the wiki has proven to be incredibly helpful for me over the years.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#10

The hardest thing about getting started with emacs is finding information about getting started with emacs. You get the "learn emacs in 10 minute" guides that show you how to open a file, and move up a line, and then after that everything goes off a cliff into installing packages and writing lisp. It's hard to get a sense for the "overview" of what emacs is about - what you should learn first, how to customize your s…

I found that Meet Emacs from the PeepCode series was pretty good, and takes you a bit further than just the absolute basics. He also has a nice fork of emacs-starter-kit on Github.

http://peepcode.com/products/meet-emacs

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