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Unless your passion is in going meta and focus on building the tools instead of using them, chances are that your current tools can do what you need just fine.
Find an expert Emacs user who's willing to help, and have them watch you in person, even for just a short time, as you use Emacs to do things. Lather, rinse, repeat. Make sure they show you how to use the built-in help and feature-exploration mechanisms (but they'll know to do that anyway, if they're an expert).
Single best thing you can do: Find an expert Emacs user who's willing to help, and have them watch you in person , even for just a short time, as you use Emacs to do things. Lather, rinse, repeat. Make sure they show you how to use the built-in help and feature-exploration mechanisms (but they'll know to do that anyway, if they're an expert).
edit: If you use MacOS, Yamamoto Mitsuharu‘s emacs-mac [3] is my recommendation, as for linux the version from your distros package manager should be apt. ;)
[0] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
[1] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs
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:
- not installing a bunch of random stuff until you're comfortable with the core experience or you simply have to adjust or disable something that bugs you
- just using Emacs, and not customizing the crap out of it, ditto
If you haven't gone through the Emacs tutorial, it's how I learned it (at 300 baud, uphill both ways and in the snow -- not kidding about the 300 baud thing, though).
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:…
What’s the most common IDE and tooling setup for Clojure folks?
1. Go through the Emacs Tutorial. Just start emacs, put the cursor on the text 'Emacs Tutorial' and hit enter. It will only take 30 mins max.
2. Go through the first chapter in the Practical Common Lisp book here: http://gigamonkeys.com/book/lather-rinse-repeat-a-tour-of-th...
3. By now you are comfortable navigating around and editing text, opening files, running emacs commands with M-x etc... so you can now install packages for syntax highlighting for your language etc... via M-x package-install -> search for your language (usually LANGUAGE-mode), and install it.
4. Use emacs to edit all your files for at least 1 day.
5. Use emacs keybindings to navigate around in other apps if you're on Mac or Linux, those are standard keybindings that work everywhere in Terminal, bash, Textedit, Chrome, etc...
6. Learn how to use vim, download a vim cheatsheet and have it handy for reference, edit some files in vim (git commit messages will also do).
7. Install evil-mode and edit your .emacs.d/init.el file to bind a key to toggle evil-mode on/off
8. In maybe one day max, you're very comfortable in emacs now, and may be well on your way to writing your own extension functions. You're pretty much an emacs expert by now, in only 2 days max!
9. Try out different emacs configs. You can try mine out here: https://github.com/sufyanadam/.emacs.d it's setup for all major languages, Ruby, Python, React, JSX, etc... It also has some soundboard keys bound, try C-c-n-m when you want to greet someone new but don't want to be interrupted (you have to have mplayer installed on your system for it to work).