Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thoughts on Learning Emacs

wideaperture.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#11

Post by sayemm »

mrspeaker wrote: post #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 s…

I learned Emacs last year from the O'Reilly book, "Learning GNU Emacs" - http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Emacs-Third-Debra-Cameron/dp/...

It's an excellent reference and introduction. I also blindly followed Steve Yegge's advice here too, which turned out to be great: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#13

Post by abhiyerra »

mrspeaker wrote: post #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 s…

I learned Emacs about 7 months ago. I would say that spending a little bit of time experimenting everyday with it is probably the way to learn new functionality. But I think learning Elisp definitely improved my usage of Emacs because it lets you understand why Emacs does what it does.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#14

Post by brendoncrawford »

jerrya wrote: post #7
shuaib wrote: 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.

Eclipse has an emacs mode built in.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#15

Post by derrida »

mrspeaker wrote: post #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 s…

One way is to commit to using emacs for everything, now, and then slowly 'dig your way out'.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#16

Post by alayne »

brendoncrawford wrote: post #14
jerrya wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eclipse has an emacs mode built in.

Eclipse has a set of Emacs key bindings, but it's hard for me to use because I have muscle memory of features that don't exist in Eclipse (prefix arguments, buffer manipulation, and so on). The Emacs+ plugin is better, but I honestly prefer to use the normal bindings rather then get tripped up repeatedly by fake Emacs.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#17

Post by __david__ »

derrida wrote: post #15
mrspeaker wrote: post #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 s…

One way is to commit to using emacs for everything, now, and then slowly 'dig your way out'.

That is how I had to start. I just decided I would use it and be completely overwhelmed for a couple weeks. It also helps if you have a proficient Emacs use sitting nearby that so that you can constantly ask how do things.

Re: Thoughts on Learning Emacs

#20

Post by angus77 »

gvnonor wrote: post #18

The single best thing I did to become proficient using Emacs was to switch my CapsLock key to Ctrl. Learning to touch type comes a close second.

I would've thought it'd be the other way around. Why would you bother with a text editor if you're not motivated enough to learn how to type?
Post reply on HN