Hacker News Reader

Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

View on HN

A good way to get straight in, is to download `emacs`, open it, and follow the built in "Emacs Tutorial" (click the link on the first page that is shown). It brings a new user through the concepts of the editor, how to move around, do some of the most usual actions, and get familiar with its vocabulary.

At first, it is also a good practice not to install any package, and use the built-in capabilities (`magit` and `org-mode` are now part of the default installation) for a while, the time to discover what comes with the "factory defaults".

Also, for some inspirations, watching videos from `System Crafters, Howard Abrams, Emacs Rocks` to see how some people use it.

It can take a while to get used to everything, or to install packages and customize it to what other editors comes with by default, but the reward is worth.

Also be sure to use "C-h k" (describe-key), "C-h f" (describe-function) and "C-h v" (describe-variable) liberally. Emacs' self-documenting nature makes it significantly easier to understand what certain actions do and how certain options work.

> `magit` and `org-mode` are now part of the default installation)

Org is, but magit is not.

The "Mastering Emacs" is great. But, you don't need it to get started, instead check https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide

I strongly recommend the book "Mastering Emacs" by Mickey P. You will need some patience as well, I recommend going slow and steady for a week at least using the book, with a vanilla/standard Emacs install.

It took me about 2 weeks to get productive at first (this was in 2018), and now I use Emacs every day for a wide variety of tasks (programming and notes, mostly).

If you feel overwhelmed in trying out Emacs, always remember, you don't have to switch cold-turkey. You can keep working with your previous editor and use Emacs in your spare time. Or go 50-50. Or any other method that keeps the initial time of not being quite as productive from being a significant downside. Once you get the hang of it, you can still try it out for work and recognize small issues in the workflow, which you can then try to find fixes for in your spare time or spare time projects.

Personally, I am using Emacs for everything related to plain text files. I have benefited at previous jobs massively from already having solved some issues on my own time.

I currently use nano for a lot of my plain text or markdown editing inside my terminal, and VSCode or Visual Studio for a lot of my IDE needs. I just keep hearing good things about how emacs can be a useful and cohesive system so I'm interesting in giving it a try haha

i would heartily recommend micky-petersen's : Mastering Emacs (https://www.masteringemacs.org/about)

The book “Mastering Emacs” is nice. But both programs have tutorials builtin and extensive documentation. There’s also various youtube walkthrough videos for features.

https://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/emacs/

There's a wiki page with links to plenty of resources: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SiteMap

Reply on news.ycombinator.com