Comment by beepbooptheory | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beepbooptheory | Hacker News Reader

Just to add: the built-in "Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" is also really really great. I have been using emacs for a while, with one framework or another, but always hesitated actually learning lisp. I was too focused on learning the kinds of languages and systems that might get me a job, and it felt like too big of a venture in learning a whole language just for my development environment. Now, I have a given up on the employable thing, and have been enlightened by SICP and lispey languages, and in general, the simple beauty of Emacs itself, not just what I can make it do. It takes only a little time to get comfortable with the nested (), and weird vocabulary, and it just really will click with you at some point, how simple it all really is, how every function bears on the simple syntactic principles of the language as whole, its lists all the way down!

You can see the language work, by looking at the code.

It may not get me a fancy computer job, but I think I am happier on the whole anyway, giving myself to lisp. Something therapeutic about it.

> ... and have been enlightened by SICP and lispey languages,

Fun anecdote: I've got my copy of SICP signed by both authors for Sussman invited me to have tea in his office and when I arrived the next day, by sheer chance, Abelson was there too! They joked that had I been there 30 minutes early Sussman's wife, who proofread the book, would have signed it too! I've got a cool pic taken at that moment: me standing along these two legends and proudly holding the purple book... I'll post that pic and full story the day I have a blog.

Besides that I pretty much live inside Emacs. The occasional elisp (3000 lines of custom elisp hackery over the decades) and lots of Clojure/ClojureScript.

Wow so cool! I have been working through it with just the HTML version, but recently resolved to get the physical book, its just one those I gotta have.. Then, one day when I have the money, I will get the full volumes of The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth.

I just printed out the pdf version of the book. I found a shop that would bind it for me and print it double-sided.

I wonder how much he could raise for charity by selling autographed copies. The man is a legend.

> had I been there 30 minutes early Sussman's wife, who proofread the book, would have signed it too!

I have thought that J Sussman not only proofread the book, but also came up with some of the problem sets and tested many of them: she worked through the book, not just a matter of spell-checking.

But I don't know.

In any event, SICP changed my world in a good way. Very cool that you got both authors to sign a copy!

>It may not get me a fancy computer job, but I think I am happier on the whole anyway, giving myself to lisp.

I am the same way. I have been using Emacs since 1995, but have never had a full-time programming/IT job (although my tech skills have always been integral to my career). Perhaps having the luxury of not having to write code for pay is what makes me want to instead slowly learn Elisp. I read email using VM on Emacs (also since 1995), and over the last few years I have broken out of just knowing enough to maintain Emacs' dotfiles to actually writing substantial routines that expand on/fix VM and Emacs's capabilities.

How do you access the built-in "Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp"?

C-h i m 'Emacs Lisp Intro'

That doesn't work for me.

Don't use the quotes for the phrase, just type it verbatim. If that still doesn't work then either the info page isn't installed (weird) or something else is up. You can also, from the first info page at C-h i, type "C-s emacs lisp intro" which should bring you to it. And again, if it's not there then something is wonky with your install.

I have a totally standard Emacs install, but it's not there. C-h i and searching with C-s for "lisp" finds nothing either.

So the only thing I can find is that for emacs before emacs 21 it was not included (I didn't know that, I guess I installed it through my package manager or some other means back then and forgot). After that, it is included by default. But you can check to see if your package manager includes a separate `emacs-lisp-intro` or similar package. Short that, you'll have to download it from the site and install it manually to see it in emacs or just use the HTML version.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

I found it on my Mac in the menu bar. Like the one at the top of the screen next to the Apple logo. Clicking with my mouse: Help > More Manuals > Introduction to Emacs Lisp.

I assume in Windows/Linux this would actually be attached to the window frame at the top.

It should on a standard install.

If you have things remapped, try M-x info, then search for "Emacs List Intro" but it should be near the top anyway.

M-x info, C-s lisp... nothing.

I suspect you have an idiosyncratic install.

    C-h i d m Emacs Lisp Intro RET

Need that d to take you back to the top directory if you happen to be browsing some other info manual already.

C-h i d m Emacs<press space>Lisp<press space>[no match]

Takes me to information on keymaps

Something must have clearly gone wrong with the install (or perhaps there is a minimal install version...?) If this were Gentoo, I would suggest that perhaps the "doc" USE flag was not enabled?

Looks like Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives don't install the Emacs manuals by default. I had to do this to get it on my PopOS box:

sudo apt-get -y install emacs-common-non-dfsg

Same. I have a vanilla Emacs install and the Lisp Intro doesn't seem to be there.

You can find it online though:

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsLispIntro

Edit: I'm on an Ubuntu derived distro, so this may be the issue:

https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/48211/emacs-manual...

Edit2:

Yeah, at least for me that was the problem. This fixed it:

sudo apt-get -y install emacs-common-non-dfsg

Are you using Debian, and if so, do you have the non-free documentation installed (emacs-common-non-dfsg)?

This is Debian, yes. Thank you, I will try that.

More in line with the submission's advice:

Help menu --> More manuals --> Introduction to Emacs Lisp

Using the menu bar, remember don't disable that,

    Help => More Manuals => Introduction to Emacs Lisp

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