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Since Steve Purcell loves new technologies and update his setup frequently, it may be a little harder to follow him for beginners. That’s actually great.
by textread 4y ago
Since Steve Purcell loves new technologies and update his setup
frequently, it may be a little harder to follow him for beginners.
That’s actually great. I’m lucky to stick to his setup because pulling
from his git branch gets me updated with the latest cool things in
community.
When I say “on the shoulders of giants”, I’m stressing that you need
set your standard higher. I’m NOT saying the master’s setup is “newbie
friendly”. If it happens to be “friendly”, it’s just the coincidence.
I just perused through the tutorial.
This is some horrible advice, IMHO.
Also, cargo culting everybody to use the Evil mode for Vim bindings in Emacs is also probably bad advice, unless you are teaching emacs to a vim user.
As a beginner, you are better off starting your emacs config from scratch.
Some of the opinions of the author have been stated as facts:-
...every master uses the package smex to remember keybindings
In my opinion, as of 2023, the best way to learn emacs the right way is through the textbook 'Mastering Emacs' by Mickey Petersen.
Trust me, that book is well worth the price tag.
Mickey walks you chapter by chapter, while you build your own emacs configuration as you learn new things.
Once you have worked through that textbook, you will find it a piece of cake to study other people's configurations on github and learn more.
If you are looking for motivation to learn emacs, watch the short 2 minute demo videos on the Youtube Channel @EmacsRocks
- cc_ashby 4y agoEmacs from scratch is the way to go. Added abstractions are usually not good enough to completely replace fiddling around with vanilla Emacs.
- kickaha 4y agoIn my opinion, as of 2023, the best way to learn emacs the right way is through the textbook 'Mastering Emacs' by Mickey Petersen. Trust me, that book is well worth the price tag. Strongly second this opinion! Mickey Petersen simply has no equal in explaining Emacs. His book and blog posts are a model of effective teaching, starting from zero. Yet somehow gently ceomprehensive. Hard recommend.
- ehecatl42 4y agoTwo videos by Steve Yegge should be enough to convince the most dyed-in-the-wool anti-Emacser to consider re-evaluating their position. (Here is the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkIicfzPBys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkIicfzPBys). My top-tip, FWIW, is learning how to navigate the help system to the point that it drags you into the deepest layers of Emacs' source code. > smex The three packages, whichkey, helpful and marginalia are excellent for beginners for quick overviews of what's going on at the surface. And, yes, Mickey P's work is undoubtedly of great value!