Ask HN: Any fun ways to learn Emacs?

I personally like the Emacs keybinds because they are also supported in Cocoa Text framework, which means native Mac applications respect them. It's not just the terminal that follows these keybinds, but every graphical program in my system. You can actually use S-c / S-v and C-k / C-y to maintain two clipboards at once. This is a feature I miss every time I have to use a computer that is not a Mac. I also like being able to use C-a, C-e, C-k, and move between words with M- and M-. In the case of Emacs, the proper keybinds are M-f and M-b, but Mac also uses meta key as a sort of compose key, so this is the keybind used in graphical applications.

You need which-key for your emacs. This way you only need to know the first keys (like C-x) in a chord, and then you will see what all the keys do. And since you come from vim, like me, you can use evil (and evil-collection). The other thing is you likely need to start liking and learning some basic Lisp.

As you learn the key bindings keep thinking about how to use Emacs as your operating system and ask questions to experienced users in forums or to LLMs. Read the manual, slowly, over a period of weeks, then reread it. Eventually learn a bit more elisp and learn how to program your own environment. Once your shell is within Emacs, and 50% of your daily interactions with a computer happen through it, you quickly reach nirvana in your journey towards Emacs mastery and you get to enjoy the things you built yourself.

alias vim emacs

There is no "learning" Emacs in a traditional sense, as there is no linear, structured, or categorized methodology. Emacs is vast, learning it is similar to learning a human language. Most of the time when people ask how to approach Emacs, it is like asking "how do I learn to move and live in Brazil," to which the appropriate suggestion would probably be "hmm, maybe start by listening to Portuguese?"

Imagine if there were a browser or a graphics editor where you could change any aspect of it, not just the UI - the look and feel of the elements, but the entire behavior of each element. Imagine if you could "screenshot" the current workspace in this "hacky, recursive Photoshop," then erase, repaint, and resize the panels, menus, buttons, etc., apply it, and then suddenly the whole UI transforms. Emacs feels like that, you can change just about anything - how it looks, how it behaves, and even how it listens and speaks. But to get there, you need to know Emacs Lisp.

So, my suggestion to understand Emacs is to learn Emacs Lisp. If you have never used any Lisps before - Clojure, CL, Fennel, or Scheme, there are two fundamental things you need to understand first. This is vital because without these, it's almost guaranteed to get frustrated. First, you need to learn to love the parenthesis, embrace the structure, and learn structural editing. Second, you need to understand the REPL-driven way of writing Lisp programs. Other languages have REPLs, but Lisp REPLs are different. Grasping the way to evaluate any expression at the point is essential.

After that, I suggest starting to write Emacs Lisp. Pick a problem to solve and try to figure out how to do it in Elisp. Start with something small, maybe not even very practical, like uppercasing every second letter in a paragraph. Eventually, you will learn how to use built-in help, debugger, and profiler and maybe even write your own Elisp packages.

The value of learning Emacs Lisp is that it forces you to develop a "hacktistic" mindset, where you are certain that any aspect of your computer workflow - any program, any interaction can be changed. You will no longer have to agree to "the status quo." Instead of helplessly yelling at your computer and hitting the screen when things don't work as expected, you will gain insight into knowing why things don't work. This wisdom might not alleviate the pain, but it will give you the insight.

Don't try to learn how to stay afloat on the surface; learn how to swim deep in the ocean - it will open a world of possibilities.