4 ms·

> I spent some time a decade ago learning better emacs skills (macros on the fly). This. I spent a week in 2000 focusing on learning Emacs. To this day, I'll u

> I spent some time a decade ago learning better emacs skills (macros on the fly). This. I spent a week in 2000 focusing on learning Emacs. To this day, I'll use downtime to browse through packages, forums and documentation looking for new (to me) things to tweak Emacs with, or new (mostly CLI) tools. I just discovered the various rainbow modes last month, and life is so much better.

bluehatbrit 6y ago
Do you have any advice of where to get started learning Emacs? I don't get on with vim and have the very basic editor / navigation commands down in emacs, but finding well written learning resources past that point seems really difficult. Should I learn a package manager before Emacs lisp? Or start learning some of the built in more advanced functionality past opening and editing files? I'm struggling to find resources as well as understanding what to learn next and it's proving quite a blocker.
- acomjean 6y ago
  It was a long time ago, but I got a book "Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition". Its a shame that there isn't better documentation to get past the navigation stuff. There were some short video tutorials I used too (I can't find right now...) The story linked here has a bunch of resources. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492804 (https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collection-of-emacs-resources/ https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collecti...) its old but emacs hasn't changed a ton. https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collection-of-emacs-resources/ https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collecti...
- npsimons 6y ago
  I just went through the Emacs tutorial (C-h t), then used Emacs everyday, for everything. I pick up bits and pieces here and there across the web. I went through Chassel's Emacs lisp book a while back, but can't remember most of it as I felt it's more aimed at developing Emacs itself. A lot of Emacs is self-documenting and I use that. Look at the docs for the current mode (C-h m), learn keybindings (C-h b), change settings (M-x customize-group), read the info pages (C-h i m emacs). Funnily enough, studying Common Lisp has helped me more easily read elisp.

bluehatbrit 6y ago

Do you have any advice of where to get started learning Emacs? I don't get on with vim and have the very basic editor / navigation commands down in emacs, but finding well written learning resources past that point seems really difficult. Should I learn a package manager before Emacs lisp? Or start learning some of the built in more advanced functionality past opening and editing files? I'm struggling to find resources as well as understanding what to learn next and it's proving quite a blocker.

acomjean 6y ago
It was a long time ago, but I got a book "Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition". Its a shame that there isn't better documentation to get past the navigation stuff. There were some short video tutorials I used too (I can't find right now...) The story linked here has a bunch of resources. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492804 (https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collection-of-emacs-resources/ https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collecti...) its old but emacs hasn't changed a ton. https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collection-of-emacs-resources/ https://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collecti...
npsimons 6y ago
I just went through the Emacs tutorial (C-h t), then used Emacs everyday, for everything. I pick up bits and pieces here and there across the web. I went through Chassel's Emacs lisp book a while back, but can't remember most of it as I felt it's more aimed at developing Emacs itself. A lot of Emacs is self-documenting and I use that. Look at the docs for the current mode (C-h m), learn keybindings (C-h b), change settings (M-x customize-group), read the info pages (C-h i m emacs). Funnily enough, studying Common Lisp has helped me more easily read elisp.