Learning Emacs
Cluster centers on beginner tips, tutorials, resources, and strategies for overcoming Emacs's learning curve, with frequent mentions of the built-in tutorial (C-h t), cheat sheets, and incremental practice.
Activity Over Time
Top Contributors
Keywords
Sample Comments
Can you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?
What's the learning curve if you're not an Emacs user?
What helped you most getting up to speed in emacs? Every time I try I give up
Fellow n00b here, but maybe a little further along in my emacs journey.I started with Emacs as my first editor when I first was learning how to code a few years ago. I played with it for about a year, then left it for VSCode when I got a job as the projects at the time were heavily JS/TypeScript based, then slowly went back to Emacs as I started to feel frustrated at how painful it was to do certain things on VSCode that I knew would be lower-friction on an editor like Emacs or Vim.Th
There's a built-in tutorial mode (takes about 45-60min) that you should go through to get started, and then you should just start editing all of your files using what you pick up in the tutorial. You'll make mistakes, discover new features, and start to understand it. You won't need to reach outside of it for new things for awhile - there's at least a few months of learning to just be had from exploring emacs.
Open Emacs and type C-h t (ctrl and h together and then t) that will open the emacs built in tutorial. Start going through it, then download one of the many cheatsheets and print it out and stick it somewhere you can see it from your desk.Its quite a long learning curve, and I am still no expert, but its my favorite editor now. I cannot say its any better or worse than any of its rivals, but I put the time into learning it better than the others!
You'd do well to start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs and stop regurgitating half-understood opinions of others.
what makes you think Emacs has a high learning curve?
What’s a good resource for learning emacs for someone who’s been using vim for more than 20 years?
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 t