I've noticed a curious situation with learning (and configuring) emacs that once i've got it to be mostly[1] working i can remember all the little details that

I've noticed a curious situation with learning (and configuring) emacs that once i've got it to be mostly[1] working i can remember all the little details that were causing me grief prior but cannot remember how I achieved the current workable state, and as a result I've never been able to pass on any of my own successes to another user. My opinion of emacs configurations[2] is that they are incredibly elaborate jenga towers; 30 or 40 odd years of scripts balanced with utmost care on top of each other. As i mentioned in a previous comment ive stopped trying to maintain my own clumsy pile of jenga blocks and have used technomancy's emacs-starter-kit. So far i'm happier than i've ever been with an emacs install[3]. so, in an attempt to avoid letting the success i had on monday evaporate. 0) grabbed a recent emacs 23 for mac os x (not aquamacs at various suggestions). 1) grab the emacs start kit; its targeted at dynamic languages in general, not just clojure. It is a replacement for your ~/.emacs.d/. It includes elpa, the package manager thing. M-x package[tab] will list all the functions in the package manager. 2) grab a cheat sheet and attach it to a surface near your screen. refer to it often. 3) i have not even tried to use slime and swank. emacs and paredit are enough of a learning curve for me at the moment. I use lein from the shell to access my repl, git from the shell for managing my repo. 4) install clojure-mode via elpa if you are dabbling in clojure. apparently its not part of the default starter kit. M-x package-install [enter] clojure-mode [enter] i believe. I'm happy with his because im learning the keybindings for emacs and paredit without having to worry about futzing with the emacs setup. paredit is already proving to be a great mode for editing clojure (or lisp in general i guess) code that its improved my life vs textmate. maybe in 6 months i'll look at tinkering with things some more. [1] I used emacs at uni for about 5 years, and later at a job for a couple. At no time was I happy with my emacs set up, merely content that it was working. [2] bound to be hated by those who are fluent emacsians; sorry guys its just how it looks from where im sitting. [3] I'd still be using textmate for clojure if i hadn't heard about paredit. Maybe when counter clockwise gets a bit more love i'll have another look at using eclipse for my clojure code. [edited:formatting]