5 ms·
The thing is that you can learn it very incrementally. I've been using it for years and don't know more than a tiny bit. My knowledge of elisp is abysmal. Bu
by radarsat1 4y ago
The thing is that you can learn it very incrementally. I've been using it for years and don't know more than a tiny bit. My knowledge of elisp is abysmal. But, you get to learn how to add little things to your config here and there when you find something worth trying or improving.
Meanwhile I recommend just learning the vanilla defaults as best as possible. As long as you know how to open files, save things, switch between buffers, and quit, you're kind of good to go as far as immediate usability goes. Eventually you learn a few more key bindings to make navigation easier and faster, how to use macros, shell commands, etc. But you can learn these things on an as-needed basis.
- mickeyp 4y agoAgreed. This is really good advice.
- gumby 4y agoOne of the offputting things about emacs is the enthusiasm directed to beginners to customize, pick a "distro" and basically overwhelm people when starting. It's a shame because what's wrong with enthusiasm? But you can start using emacs with a handful of commands. Just typing puts characters into your buffer; c-f goes forward a character, c-b back a character, c-p goes the previous line, c-n goes to the next. c-x c-s saves the buffer into a file while c-x c-f finds a file by name and makes a buffer containing its contents. These commands have existed since I started using Emacs about 45 years ago! Emacs is full of help. Press c-h for help -- it will prompt you for what you want help on. Every keystroke, every command, even "how did I get here" is in your help. Over time you'll learn more commands, perhaps put something in your init file...and eventually it will be like a comfortable glove designed to fit your hands (which will stay on the keyboard, right?)
- jonnycomputer 4y agoI get this. But on the other hand, there is a reason people customize Emacs, both by writing elisp, and loading packages. Vanilla emacs is usable, but its really not great, from a usability perspective. So the endless recommendations on what you should do to start.
- bloopernova 4y agoA lot like a minimal Linux distro. Both scratch the itch of "I wish I could do this when that happens."
- tmtvl 4y agoYeah, you can do what I did: open Emacs, see "help" in the menubar (best thing since sliced bread), click it, click "tutorial", and we're off to the races.
- margarina72 4y agohonestly i tried the vanilla default many time to start with and it was the reason I waited so long to adopt emacs. Since I tried Doom Emacs, I am really enjoying the experience, and it has seriously improved my workflow. Now I can gradually learn things, improve my lisp, or try new work flows, etc. Pre made distribution are a real improvement to the emacs ecosystem.