4 ms·

I have looked at Doom, etc. but I'm definitely turned off by the level of complexity of these "distros", especially Doom, which is essentially more divergent fr

I have looked at Doom, etc. but I'm definitely turned off by the level of complexity of these "distros", especially Doom, which is essentially more divergent from Emacs than Vim. Multi-thousand line config, it's own management cli, documentation, packages, etc... Since I'm looking to "learn" Emacs I'd love to start with Vanilla and add in things as required as you would with any other editor. Starting with something like Doom makes it near impossible to untangle what is coming from where and trim down to exactly what you want, which is sort of the point of using Emacs in the first place.

signa11 3y ago
agree with that sentiment. unfortunately, you have to bite the bullet and start something of your own, if you want to learn the beast. thankfully though, most of the stuff that you want to do are just a google search away these days, and presence of declarative package-managers f.e. use-package, straight etc. does lighten the burden somewhat. you might want to look at: https://emacs.amodernist.com/ https://emacs.amodernist.com/ which provides a rudimentary configuration generator.
- vidbina 3y ago
  Felt (still am, actually) this problem too. Started with the same approach (Vanilla Emacs) a few years back in order to really learn the ins-and-outs after giving DOOM and others a shot and feeling like I didn't have the faintest what was really going on with all the magic. I somehow did end up falling in love with Emacs again[^1]. Won't lie... there was a fair amount of cursing involved and, despite the love, I wouldn't recommend many to venture down this road[^2]. Now I have gone the literate config way in my dotfiles https://github.com/vidbina/dotfiles/tree/main/emacs https://github.com/vidbina/dotfiles/tree/main/emacs and I jump between Cursor (vscode-based), Neovim and Emacs for different tasks on a daily. I also found https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config/blob/main/modules/shared/config/emacs/config.org https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config/blob/main/module... just a few days ago which could be a useful resource when you're building yours up. > Unsolicited tip: Take it as a hobby! Picked up a bunch of useful learnings from my Emacs experiences (a. literate configs, b. comfort around working with LISPs, c. bigger appreciation for parts of the GNU ecosystem, d. more in-depth understanding of how my devtools work which helps me debug issues in Neovim or vscode when I see them) but still think that I'm cursed by wanting to go down this road so badly. Wish I could just vscode my way through life and build dope stuff, unencumbered! P.S.: I found Emacs far less painful ever since I started rubber-ducking with ChatGPT about my elisp and configuration problems a few years ago, so now is definitely a nicer time to take the plunge. 1: Used Emacs heavily in college over 12 years ago when I would boot the Windows + Novell groupware school computers into my own Ubuntu config with my Emacs and embedded dev toolchain from my pendrive. 2: The single-threaded-ness and related ocassional unresponsiveness/hangups still grind my gears.
mstep 3y ago
maybe this helps: "This is a minimal Emacs starter kit. Like, really minimal. Here's the short of the philosophy: Focus on using default, built-in Emacs behavior Yes, we all love our fancy third-party packages. This starter kit focuses on what is built-in to Emacs. Why? Because there are too many good packages and picking and choosing the best is a joy we leave to the user. Explain every customization and encourage modification The goal of this starter kit is to encourage end-user adaptation and growth. All of the .el files should be legible and, more importantly, justify in plain English the rationale for adding the configuration they do. No magic We keep things crushingly simple here. That means no fancy loadable modules or whatnot. Everything is as straight-forward as can be." https://sr.ht/~ashton314/emacs-bedrock/ https://sr.ht/~ashton314/emacs-bedrock/
- ashton314 3y ago
  :) Hey! That’s my project! Let me know if you have any questions.
  - meonmyphone 3y ago
    I came across this when setting up my new config, thanks for sharing!
dparen12 3y ago
I rolled my own emacs configuration for many years, but I've been extremely happy after switching to doom. It includes sane defaults and comes with some special tricks for making startup fast. If there's something that's not exactly what I want, I just figure out how to fix it in elisp and that's where my emacs learning comes in. You really don't need to build up a config from scratch to get the full power of emacs. Using doom just gets you further along the curve to having the config that you want. You will definitely need to do some further tinkering with elisp to get doom configured "just so" or to implement functionality, and I find that's plenty enough for learning emacs.

signa11 3y ago

agree with that sentiment. unfortunately, you have to bite the bullet and start something of your own, if you want to learn the beast. thankfully though, most of the stuff that you want to do are just a google search away these days, and presence of declarative package-managers f.e. use-package, straight etc. does lighten the burden somewhat. you might want to look at: https://emacs.amodernist.com/ https://emacs.amodernist.com/ which provides a rudimentary configuration generator.

vidbina 3y ago
Felt (still am, actually) this problem too. Started with the same approach (Vanilla Emacs) a few years back in order to really learn the ins-and-outs after giving DOOM and others a shot and feeling like I didn't have the faintest what was really going on with all the magic. I somehow did end up falling in love with Emacs again[^1]. Won't lie... there was a fair amount of cursing involved and, despite the love, I wouldn't recommend many to venture down this road[^2]. Now I have gone the literate config way in my dotfiles https://github.com/vidbina/dotfiles/tree/main/emacs https://github.com/vidbina/dotfiles/tree/main/emacs and I jump between Cursor (vscode-based), Neovim and Emacs for different tasks on a daily. I also found https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config/blob/main/modules/shared/config/emacs/config.org https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config/blob/main/module... just a few days ago which could be a useful resource when you're building yours up. > Unsolicited tip: Take it as a hobby! Picked up a bunch of useful learnings from my Emacs experiences (a. literate configs, b. comfort around working with LISPs, c. bigger appreciation for parts of the GNU ecosystem, d. more in-depth understanding of how my devtools work which helps me debug issues in Neovim or vscode when I see them) but still think that I'm cursed by wanting to go down this road so badly. Wish I could just vscode my way through life and build dope stuff, unencumbered! P.S.: I found Emacs far less painful ever since I started rubber-ducking with ChatGPT about my elisp and configuration problems a few years ago, so now is definitely a nicer time to take the plunge. 1: Used Emacs heavily in college over 12 years ago when I would boot the Windows + Novell groupware school computers into my own Ubuntu config with my Emacs and embedded dev toolchain from my pendrive. 2: The single-threaded-ness and related ocassional unresponsiveness/hangups still grind my gears.

mstep 3y ago

maybe this helps: "This is a minimal Emacs starter kit. Like, really minimal. Here's the short of the philosophy: Focus on using default, built-in Emacs behavior Yes, we all love our fancy third-party packages. This starter kit focuses on what is built-in to Emacs. Why? Because there are too many good packages and picking and choosing the best is a joy we leave to the user. Explain every customization and encourage modification The goal of this starter kit is to encourage end-user adaptation and growth. All of the .el files should be legible and, more importantly, justify in plain English the rationale for adding the configuration they do. No magic We keep things crushingly simple here. That means no fancy loadable modules or whatnot. Everything is as straight-forward as can be." https://sr.ht/~ashton314/emacs-bedrock/ https://sr.ht/~ashton314/emacs-bedrock/

ashton314 3y ago
:) Hey! That’s my project! Let me know if you have any questions.
- meonmyphone 3y ago
  I came across this when setting up my new config, thanks for sharing!

dparen12 3y ago

I rolled my own emacs configuration for many years, but I've been extremely happy after switching to doom. It includes sane defaults and comes with some special tricks for making startup fast. If there's something that's not exactly what I want, I just figure out how to fix it in elisp and that's where my emacs learning comes in. You really don't need to build up a config from scratch to get the full power of emacs. Using doom just gets you further along the curve to having the config that you want. You will definitely need to do some further tinkering with elisp to get doom configured "just so" or to implement functionality, and I find that's plenty enough for learning emacs.