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Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

As an Emacs user, I still don't get why they have the menu bar and tool bar, they have always been harder to use than the other methods of interaction, and most people don't discover much through them anyway since the menu bar is so cluttered.

Nonetheless, very happy with it once I put in my relatively small config.

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When I first started using Emacs I found the menu bar useful for discovering features I had no idea existed. I quickly became fluent with the keyboard UI and can use that to explore the editor now, but it taught me not to underestimate menus. They might not be particularly useful, but they helped me find a few hidden gems.

The first thing I put in a new config is to turn off menu-bar-mode, scroll-bar-mode, and tool-bar-mode. I find they take up too much screen real estate.

Don't get me wrong, I do exactly the same thing. I'm just against removing them wholesale since I think they are valuable aids to a user who doesn't know about creating a config at all yet.

Largely because some people use it, and for those who don't putting this in their .emacs serves as a straightforward tutorial focus and a right of passage:

   (tool-bar-mode 0)
   (menu-bar-mode 0)

> As an Emacs user, I still don't get why they have the menu bar and tool bar

For new users and people who run emacs by mistake or to just check it out maybe?

But I agree with you, these days disabling toolbar and menu bar is my first action when configuring a new emacs environment.

The right-hand side of the menu bar can be helpful in application-like modes (like gnus or M-x list-packages). I agree you might as well turn it off otherwise and regain the space.

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