[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?
        
       Hi all,  I'm a longtime Neovim user who's been EMacs-curious. The
       hold up for me has been that I've been unable to find a source of
       truth for what's top-of-the-line as far as plugins are. With
       Neovim, it's a safe bet to look at what folks like Folke are doing,
       but I have struggled to find a similar figure in the Emacs
       community who gives insight into what's-what. I know Doom exists,
       but I want to fully "own" my config and not over complicate it.
       Thanks!
        
       Author : weakfish
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2025-11-01 17:13 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
       | kevstev wrote:
       | I saw what was possible with emacs via systemcrafters:
       | https://systemcrafters.net/emacs-from-scratch/
       | 
       | And I should note I have been using it for about 25 years, and
       | was mostly in the dark about what it was capable of, though many
       | of those years were in environments where I was using versions
       | 5-10 years out of date, and completely locked down/out of things
       | like melpa.
       | 
       | As far as keeping up with whats latest and greatest, I think the
       | real answer is there isn't a good online resource. There are
       | emacs meetups and conferences and some are virtual, and you can
       | ask around other power users and see what they are doing. I even
       | find emacs packages to be pretty poor at selling themselves on
       | why you should use them.
       | 
       | As an example, Ivy and Counsel are kind of game changers to the
       | UI, but I don't think you get any idea of that from their manual
       | or main github page: https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper
        
         | senkora wrote:
         | +1 to systemcrafters. It is probably the closest community to
         | what you are looking for.
        
           | ews wrote:
           | +2 , it's an amazing resource for emacs and guix
        
         | omnicognate wrote:
         | Vertico and Consult are the successors to Ivy and Counsel.
         | They're more cleanly integrated with the native capabilities.
         | I've found them a big improvement.
         | 
         | Systemcrafters have a video on moving to them, but I haven't
         | watched it.
        
         | MkLouis wrote:
         | +1 from me aswell.
         | 
         | I personally started with SystemsCrafters and after I started
         | to grok Emacs I went to use DoomEmacs. I found DistroTubes
         | literate DoomEmacs Config a good starting point to see whats
         | possible.
         | https://gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/blob/master/.config/doom/...
        
       | e40 wrote:
       | You didn't say which platform you're on. For Linux, just use the
       | emacs that comes with the distro. For Windows, download the
       | official build for Windows. For macOS, I used to use
       | emacsformacosx.com's version but now I use Homebrew's emacs-plus.
       | It has a native-compiled version and is hella fast.
       | 
       | I use the regular package manager for emacs (package-install).
       | 
       | Been a user since the first version of GNU Emacs, back when RMS
       | was trying to reproduce Gosling's emacs (which I used for a
       | couple of years). That was the early 80's.
        
         | rcfox wrote:
         | > For Linux, just use the emacs that comes with the distro.
         | 
         | Are the major distros shipping packages with tree-sitter
         | support yet?
        
           | baobun wrote:
           | Yes. All of them.
        
       | sinker wrote:
       | I recommend starting with vanilla Emacs and just adding things as
       | you find the need for them. Emacs comes with a lot of things
       | OOTB. After a decade, my only essential package addon-ons are
       | magit and yasnippet.
       | 
       | I have other packages installed, but they're esoteric for my own
       | purposes.
        
       | MangoToupe wrote:
       | Doom is still a good reference for which packages people find
       | interesting; don't dismiss it out of hand. I do think it's quite
       | heavy handed in terms of altering core input behavior, tho.
        
       | emoprincejack wrote:
       | Just use Doom. Its good.
        
       | dingnuts wrote:
       | Mickey Peterson's blog/book Mastering Emacs is where I wish I had
       | started.
       | 
       | https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/beginners-guide-to-em...
       | 
       | Sacha Chua maintains a blog roll with a huge part of the Emacs
       | community represented, also: https://planet.emacslife.com/
       | 
       | Also everything Prot writes is great, here's his getting started
       | guide: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2024-11-28-basic-emacs-
       | confi...
        
       | abhiyerra wrote:
       | I've been an Emacs user for more than a decade and I would
       | recommend just using Doom especially if you are coming from a Vim
       | background.
       | 
       | I started before Doom existed but ended up in a configuration
       | similar to Doom but more brittle. I ended up just declaring
       | .emacs bankruptcy and started over with Doom and was pleasantly
       | surprised that my over 2000 line configuration became less than
       | 30 customized lines.
       | 
       | If you want to do it the hard way I'd start with figuring out
       | elpa and going from there installing the specific plugins that
       | you want. Likely, evil being a first.
        
       | defanor wrote:
       | I think the usual advice is to try the vanilla Emacs, maybe use
       | better-defaults (either directly or just for inspiration), as it
       | is a relatively light customization. The setups people use tend
       | to be quite different, as do their opinions on packages, so I
       | doubt there is a single satisfactory and agreed upon "source of
       | truth". Others' setups may be useful to check out, possibly pages
       | of emacswiki.org, chatter on the #emacs IRC channel at
       | libera.chat.
       | 
       | Edit: As for heavily customized versions (Doom, spacemacs), I
       | have not tried those myself, but occasionally saw people having
       | issues with those, and others not being able to help them, since
       | it was not clear what sort of magic is going on there. So I would
       | not recommend those to new users, at least not if you would like
       | to learn the basics and get a better hang of it, to be able to
       | debug it, though some seem to be happy with those.
        
         | tammer wrote:
         | I will second the recommendation to start with vanilla emacs.
         | That isn't to disparage releases like spacemacs & doom. I
         | simply found those to be more useful once I fully understood
         | the power that comes with a fully reprogrammable editor. There
         | is a learning curve and there is also a mental model to adopt,
         | and I think that adopting the mental model is easier when
         | starting raw and building up from scratch. Once you feel
         | comfortable maybe try spacemacs or doom to see if they offer
         | advantages for your workflow.
         | 
         | I also highly recommend the resources at
         | https://www.masteringemacs.org
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | Another vote for vanilla, learn the basics and then add
         | packages for what you need.
         | 
         | I have spent my entire career using vanilla emacs with a few
         | other packages. A lot of things, including org-mode, are
         | included by default in modern emacs.
         | 
         | The problem with learning heavily customized distributions like
         | Doom is that they won't be installed elsewhere and if you have
         | to use emacs on another system you won't have what you're
         | familiar with. Weigh that relative to how often that happens in
         | your work.
        
         | pfortuny wrote:
         | Yes, before playing football, children just mess around with a
         | ball. The thing is to end up using the ball properly, not to
         | play as Messi.
        
         | weakfish wrote:
         | I think that's the route I'm gonna go, I want my configuration
         | to be transparent and built so that I can understand it top-to-
         | bottom. I've tried Doom, but it felt too magical.
        
       | mijoharas wrote:
       | I've been using emacs for a decade by now.
       | 
       | I'd look into spacemacs (what I use).
       | 
       | It's similar to doom, in that it makes some decisions for you,
       | but you can very much have a customized experience.
       | 
       | I for instance have a lot of "stock" sections, and other things
       | that are very customized that I've made myself.
       | 
       | Look into the "layers" (sets of packages that work together). I'd
       | particularly recommend checking out the compleseus layer, which
       | is a composition of consult, orderless, vertico, and embark.
       | 
       | They're all built to be composable (selection, pattern matching,
       | selection interface, and context menu respectively), and they
       | each add up to a brilliant emacs experience while reusing emacs'
       | built-in frameworks (completing read). It's an alternative to
       | helm and ivy (I've used each before).
       | 
       | The reason I recommend spacemacs (I'm sure doom could be the
       | same, I just didn't know it) is because it is an easy way to see
       | what packages other people find useful and how to use them, and
       | it has similar conventional across different packages (so you can
       | run tests in the same way no matter whether you're using rust, or
       | python or whatever other language).
        
       | brudgers wrote:
       | Org-mode. But it's already part of the package...
       | 
       | ...because Emacs is a mature ecosystem: Meaning many and probably
       | most tools predate developer-gets-famous-on-internet thinking,
       | have been refined over decades, were built by people to get their
       | job done, and often that job was something where programming was
       | incidental to the task at hand.
        
       | uutangohotel wrote:
       | https://github.com/jamescherti/minimal-emacs.d is a great
       | starting point for owning your config.
       | 
       | On macOS: Install from emacs-plus in Homebrew
       | 
       | On Linux: Install from your distro's pkg manager.
        
         | kleinishere wrote:
         | Came here to find this. MANY upvotes.
         | 
         | I used Doom for a couple months.
         | 
         | Then started considering a vanilla eMacs. I started taking
         | notes on packages I found highly recommended and interesting.
         | 
         | Then I found this. And the author has done all that work and
         | then made it into a "let me walk through a config" including a
         | lot of the most recommended packages and sensible configs.
         | 
         | Gives you the lesson of building a config, knowing what's in
         | your config, and then being fluent in changing it.
         | 
         | He also has more notes on his blog about the packages + more :
         | https://www.jamescherti.com/essential-emacs-packages/
         | 
         | And I now feel comfortable making changes myself.
        
       | noosphr wrote:
       | There is no such thing as top of the line.
       | 
       | There are preferences.
       | 
       | Asking where to begin with 'modern' Emacs is like asking where to
       | begin with 'music'.
       | 
       | Just use stock until you find something you like better. It is
       | one of the few pieces of software left where taste is king and
       | there are no right answers.
        
       | flexagoon wrote:
       | +1 to just use Doom. Even if you disable all of Doom's extra
       | modules/plugin configurations, it still includes a lot of emacs
       | black magic that makes emacs much faster. It's very slow without
       | that.
        
       | belden wrote:
       | I've rebuilt my emacs config a few times for exactly this reason!
       | 
       | Some of the things I've found work well for me:
       | 
       | - it's pretty obvious, but it took me a while to figure it out:
       | make your `~/.emacs.d` into a git (jj, hg, whatever) repo. You
       | don't need a remote but as you try things out it's nice to be
       | able to step back in time.
       | 
       | - know what you want to build. For me I'm generally trying to
       | make emacs do something that I've seen a colleague's editor do:
       | integrating language servers for source navigation; integrating a
       | debug server for a nice visual debugging experience.
       | 
       | - some people manage their emacs configuration as org-mode files.
       | This is neat because you get an experience similar to Jupiter
       | notebooks: you can intermix commentary and elisp. I haven't ever
       | gotten to this point but it looks neat when I see others do it.
       | 
       | There are some good YouTube channels and blogs that talk about
       | configuration, or that test different packages. I've found "Emacs
       | from Scratch" and "Emacs Rocks" to be really useful.
       | 
       | There's a lot to customize and select from. Without steering you
       | one way or another, here are some changes I've made recently or
       | packages that I use:
       | 
       | 1. For language servers, I find `lsp-mode` to be easier and more
       | full-featured than `elgot`.
       | 
       | 2. `dap-mode` plays nicely with `lsp-mode` and makes debugging
       | straightforward.
       | 
       | 3. I've tried, and use, a few different plugins for AI coding:
       | `greger.el` is the first one I tried, but I've started using
       | `xenodium/agent-shell` more. If you want to write (or hack on) an
       | AI agent written in elisp, there's `steveyegge/efrit`.
       | 
       | 4. You're probably accustomed to some sort of "tab completion"
       | from neovim. Within emacs you'll need to set up a "completion
       | framework"; there's a bunch to choose from. Watch some videos and
       | experiment. You'll probably find one that feels a lot like you're
       | used to (whether that's completion-as-arrow-navigable-dropdown-
       | at-cursor, or completion-in-side-panel, or whatever).
       | 
       | Your muscle memory of how to move around in a document and how to
       | tell your editor "I want to do something new now (see a list of
       | open files, go to a new file, etc)" isn't going to translate into
       | emacs very well. It's like shifting from a laptop keyboard to
       | some weird split keyboard with thumb paddles: muscle memory won't
       | be satisfied, and you might just "not like" emacs due to that.
       | There's `evil.el` ("Emacs VI Layer") which teaches emacs to
       | recognize vim-style commands. I think vims have fantastic macro
       | recording and replaying functionality - emacs has it as well, but
       | making a recursive macro is harder for me, for some reason - and
       | evil makes emacs's macros feel on par with the vims.
       | 
       | Another tripping hazard coming from a vim-like is that "undo"
       | operates differently in emacs. I think the vims have a fairly
       | linear undo: like a browser history back button. emacs stores an
       | undo tree, which can lead to surprising behavior at first.
       | 
       | If you've written or tweaked plugins for your editor and enjoy
       | tinkering with your tools, then a vanilla greenfield approach to
       | emacs will probably be very satisfying for you.
       | 
       | If you want something that "just works" which you can experiment
       | with and gradually learn more about over time, then you might get
       | more mileage out of spacemacs.
       | 
       | I think vim-style users tend to launch vim many many times
       | through the day. cd here, edit a file; save, quit, edit the next
       | file. emacs can act like an editor, but if you think of it as a
       | highly customizable IDE, then you'll get more use out of it. My
       | uptime on emacs is generally measured in months, whereas for me
       | vim is in seconds to minutes. I mention this because the startup
       | time for emacs can be quite slow compared to vim; just don't pay
       | that cost over and over.
        
       | hommelix wrote:
       | I'm a vim user, using orgmode. I've noticed the blog of Sascha
       | Chua. She posts Emacs News and in these posts there are some
       | orgmode gems. But she is posting more on Emacs. Maybe interesting
       | to look these posts up: https://sachachua.com/topic/
        
       | porcoda wrote:
       | Vanilla emacs to start, and then the approach I take to finding
       | interesting packages and config is to read the Emacs Weekly News
       | from Sacha Chua (which often links to articles and videos
       | describing packages and configs). There sometimes are articles or
       | videos linked from there that talk about configuring from a
       | vanilla setup that are likely what you are looking for.
        
       | ashton314 wrote:
       | I maintain a pretty popular Emacs starter-kit called Bedrock. [1]
       | I suggest starting with it, or at least taking a look at it to
       | get some ideas!
       | 
       | Bedrock differs philosophically from Doom et al. in that Bedrock
       | is meant to be _as simple as possible_. There 's no magic, no
       | extra package management system (looking at you Doom) to break or
       | confuse. By default, it doesn't install any 3rd-party packages--
       | it just sets better defaults. Recent versions of Emacs can do a
       | lot, but the defaults are painfully outdated. Bedrock fixes that.
       | It's basically a vanilla Emacs experience without some of the
       | cruft carried over from the previous century.
       | 
       | Bedrock also comes with a curated set of packages to enhance
       | Emacs beyond better defaults. You can load these into your config
       | as you begin to need them. List here: [2] If you are looking for
       | a set of "modern" packages, this is it. I do pretty well keeping
       | up in this space, and a lot of these (esp. Vertico, Consult,
       | Corfu, etc.) seem to be accepted as the de-facto best
       | replacements for older packages like Helm, Ivy, etc. (That said,
       | I should add some config for Casual--very neat package to help
       | with seldom-used features of Emacs.)
       | 
       | Bedrock is meant to be understandable: clone it once, and then
       | tweak from there. You'll find a lot of forks of Bedrock on GitHub
       | as people have forked it and then built their own config on top.
       | 
       | I'm working on updating Bedrock for Emacs 31. There won't really
       | be _that_ many changes, so like, don 't wait for 31 to start your
       | Emacs journey, but know that Bedrock is actively maintained and
       | that the packages I've curated for it are the best I could
       | possibly find. :)
       | 
       | Oh, also, if you search "best Emacs packages", my blog post [3]
       | will come up on the first page on basically every search engine
       | I've tried. ;)
       | 
       | Happy hacking!
       | 
       | [1]: https://codeberg.org/ashton314/emacs-bedrock
       | 
       | [2]: https://codeberg.org/ashton314/emacs-bedrock#extras
       | 
       | [3]: https://lambdaland.org/posts/2024-05-30_top_emacs_packages/
        
         | weakfish wrote:
         | Great, thank you! I will definitely reference this.
        
         | scott01 wrote:
         | I've recently rewrote my configuration and used Bedrock as a
         | new starting point. It's great, thanks very much for making it!
        
       | tmtvl wrote:
       | Start by just opening it up and clicking on 'tutorial'. After
       | that check out Options->Manage Emacs Packages and see if anything
       | interests you. After that check out Melpa (<https://melpa.org>).
       | Finally you can check out what other people do, for example Prot
       | (<https://protesilaos.com/emacs/dotemacs>), you can look at
       | Doom's source,...
       | 
       | You're basically about to go on a journey to a country you've
       | never been, so my recommendation is to just read up about it and
       | see if you find some things you want to experience.
        
       | foobarqux wrote:
       | Don't use doom etc, just standard emacs, otherwise you won't have
       | any understanding of what is happening and how to fix it. Here's
       | a list of what I think is important, roughly more important to
       | less:                   -
       | corfu+marginalia+vertico+embark+orderless is the standard
       | completion stack now         - magit (maybe also see also the
       | "casual" the transient front end for other modes)         - avy
       | - (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)           ; 'Y' or 'N' instead of
       | 'Yes' or 'No'         - (setq confirm-kill-emacs 'y-or-n-p)
       | - evil (optionally if you like vim keybinds, you still need to
       | know basic emacs))         - if using evil: evil-collection,
       | evil-args, evil-goggles, evil-traces, evil-escape, evil-nerd-
       | commenter, evil-lion, evil-surround, etc are not "standard" but
       | still useful          - configure melpa source         - which-
       | key         - helpful         - undo-fu         - gptel         -
       | projectile         - eglot         - saveplace         - desktop
       | - uniquify         - dired/wdired         - flycheck/flymake
       | - treesitter
       | 
       | Stuff that is nice but less essential:                   -
       | general (for making your own keybinds)         - some kind of
       | multicursor mode (I use iedit but it's simple)         -
       | yasnippet         - org (usefulness depends on the person)
       | 
       | I haven't switched to corfu+marginalia+vertico+embark so I don't
       | know what the equivalent is but helm-swoop is nice.
       | 
       | Also, very important, learn the help system (C-h <key>),
       | especially C-h f, C-h k, C-h w, C-h c. And the info system
        
         | kccqzy wrote:
         | > Don't use doom etc, just standard emacs, otherwise you won't
         | have any understanding of what is happening and how to fix it.
         | 
         | Doom and Spacemacs are IMO sufficiently good abstractions that
         | you will almost never _need_ to have understanding of the
         | underlying system and to fix things. Sure for curiosity 's sake
         | you _should_ still learn what 's happening under the hood. But
         | the abstraction is almost never leaky. I think everyone
         | beginning Emacs should start with Doom or Spacemacs and
         | optionally build their own config later on.
        
       | pradyun_ wrote:
       | I think I made a similar move about 6 years ago now. Started on
       | Doom Emacs for the first 2-3 years, and honestly, for most users
       | I think Doom Emacs is all you'll ever need. If you ever decide
       | you want a bit more control over your config, which is what the
       | case was for me, then it maybe makes sense to start writing your
       | own configuration and learning about more of the native features.
       | Would definitely recommend system crafters' emacs from scratch
       | series that others have linked here -- extremely helpful.
        
       | srcreigh wrote:
       | Most comments here are giving you fish instead of teaching you
       | how to fish.
       | 
       | The emacs subreddit is pretty active. Search reddit for recent-
       | ish threads for whatever you want to do.
        
       | PessimalDecimal wrote:
       | The question is about Emacs configuration, but the keybindings
       | might also be unfamiliar if you're coming from Vim. When I was
       | learning I printed
       | https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf and
       | taped the two pages to my desk right in front of the keyboard for
       | probably a 3-4 weeks. It was useful and also felt great when I
       | didn't need it any longer.
        
       | Karrot_Kream wrote:
       | If you don't want to use a distribution like Doom (which I don't
       | fwiw and I've been using emacs for 20-something years), then I'm
       | a big fan of minimal-emacs [1] a compact init.el and early-
       | init.el that configures vanilla emacs into a good, default state.
       | From there I would pick and choose which packages I'm interested
       | by going through the Systemcrafters's community [2] as others
       | have mentioned and Reddit's r/emacs community. While
       | Systemcrafters is a fun community I'm a bit reluctant to spend
       | too much time there because it's more of a tinkering community
       | than a day-to-day-usage focused community. Fine if you want to
       | tinker all day with your config but not the best for getting work
       | done.
       | 
       | One thing I urge you to remember is that unlike neovim, Emacs
       | isn't about just enabling and disabling plugins. Emacs is a Lisp
       | environment. It really comes into its own when _you_ program it.
       | To that effect, I would read through the GNU Emacs info manual.
       | Emacs ships with its manual in its inbuilt info reader and you
       | can also find it in HTML [3] by GNU. Try not to think of your
       | emacs as a constant soup of plugins and instead a codebase that
       | you manage. The environment is very amenable to introspection,
       | and there 's inbuilt commands like `describe-key` and `describe-
       | function` that pull up documentation for elisp. I'm a fan of the
       | `helpful` package which I find to be a better version of
       | `describe`.
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/jamescherti/minimal-emacs.d
       | 
       | [2]: https://systemcrafters.net
       | 
       | [3]: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/
        
       | smj-edison wrote:
       | Another question to all those who use emacs, what do you do to
       | avoid emacs pinky? I've been hesitant to start using emacs for
       | that reason, since I've had pinky pain quite often in the past
       | two years and I'm pretty sure emacs would push me over the
       | edge...
        
         | avtar wrote:
         | +1 It's been ages since I last tried Emacs but one of the main
         | reasons it didn't resonate with me was the constant hand
         | contortions required for key chords. I'm pretty sure I tried
         | evil mode as well. Projects such as Combobulate, Vertico, etc.
         | being mentioned in this thread weren't around back then and
         | seem intriguing. Curious to learn about any other projects or
         | workarounds that help with ergonomics.
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | I type Dvorak and I use the opposite modifier key to whichever
         | key I want to modify. So, for example, for Control+A I would
         | hold the right control key and press a. Aside from that, an
         | active hobby with plenty of stretching and strengthening for
         | the entire body.
        
       | asciimov wrote:
       | Are you looking for an ide experience or just a text editor with
       | some options?
       | 
       | If a full IDE is what you are seeking go with DOOM. It will give
       | you a fully put together experience.
       | 
       | If you just want a text editor that you want to slowly add to go
       | vanilla.
       | 
       | Doom is like getting a fully furnished apartment where you can
       | choose the furniture and curtain colors. Vanilla is an empty plot
       | of land that you need to build a foundation, house, and connect
       | to city services all on your own.
        
       | auslegung wrote:
       | I suggest trying out Doom and maybe some other configs to see
       | what's available, and if you want to roll your own you can choose
       | the things you like most from them. I came to emacs from [n]vim
       | and using evil-mode was _very_ helpful in making the switch
       | easier so I recommend that
        
       | Aidevah wrote:
       | A lot of modern packages which began outside emacs have now been
       | gradually been merged into the main emacs tree and come pre-
       | installed (use-package for clean per package configuration, eglot
       | for LSP support, tree-sitter, which-key etc). So you just need to
       | learn how to configure them.
       | 
       | The most important packages which make emacs feel "modern" that
       | are still outside the emacs tree for now are the ones which makes
       | completion better, both in the main buffer and also in the
       | minibuffer (what others may call your "command palette"). They
       | are
       | 
       | - consult: search and navigation commands, provides candidates
       | for...
       | 
       | - vertico: vertical display of candidates in the minibuffer
       | 
       | - marginalia: annotations for the candidates
       | 
       | - orderless: orderless fuzzy match for candidates
       | 
       | - embark: right mouse context menu for candidates
       | 
       | Getting these setup would make your whole journey onwards much
       | smoother.
        
         | scott01 wrote:
         | I second this approach. After setting these ones up, together
         | with lsp-mode and company-mode (I like experience better than
         | eglot), my configuration stayed mostly the same. I also kept
         | adding new shortcuts for functions I needed (like symbol rename
         | or function list), and am currently at a point when Emacs
         | became a very efficient editor for me personally. I also moved
         | most of these shortcuts over to yyIntelliJ editor at work where
         | Emacs is not very practical due to lack of convenient debugger
         | (C++, Unreal Engine).
        
       | wwarner wrote:
       | i run a basic emacs configuration within docker, so it has all
       | the underlying executables & binaries installed where emacs looks
       | for them. runs exactly the same on linux & macos.
       | https://hub.docker.com/r/wwarner/emacs-native or
       | https://github.com/wwarner/emacs-native-dockerfiles
        
       | xenodium wrote:
       | Welcome to Emacs!
       | 
       | - I write about Emacs things fairly frequently:
       | https://xenodium.com
       | 
       | - I started making Emacs videos recently:
       | https://www.youtube.com/xenodium
       | 
       | - For aggregated Emacs blogs, check out
       | https://planet.emacslife.com
       | 
       | - For aggregated Emacs videos, https://emacs.tv
       | 
       | - The Emacs subreddit can be handy too
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs
       | 
       | - If on the fediverse, follow the #emacs hashtag
       | 
       | - Sacha Chua's Emacs News are great
       | https://sachachua.com/blog/category/emacs-news
       | 
       | With respect to "modern", maybe these two posts could be of
       | interest:
       | 
       | - Visual tweaks: https://xenodium.com/my-emacs-eye-candy
       | 
       | - macOS tricks: https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos
       | 
       | Enjoy the ride!
        
       | spit2wind wrote:
       | Open Emacs and press <return> to read the tutorial. This gives
       | you the basics to be productive.
       | 
       | Understandably, some people complain that it shouldn't need a
       | tutorial or the defaults are bad. There's validity to that angle.
       | There's also validity to Emacs pre-dating GUIs, the IBM keyboard,
       | and the x86 instruction set. Once you get past the history of
       | windows and killing, you can explore. The history is also super
       | interesting!
       | 
       | https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs?EmacsHistory
       | 
       | https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3386324
       | 
       | After you've read the tutorial, go wild. Try stuff out. Break
       | things. Fix them. Learn your limits. Learn that there are very
       | few limits imposed by Emacs itself.
       | 
       | Hands down, the best resource for Emacs is Emacs itself.
       | Especially, the Emacs manual and the Elisp manual. The "An
       | Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" is also excellent if
       | you're not familiar with Lisp. Learn to read Info files and learn
       | the help system (basically C-h f and C-h v)
       | 
       | https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/
       | 
       | Emacs really is a flagship of Freedom, with all its pain and
       | glory. It lets you exist at the threshold of your zone of
       | proximal development. Every bit you put into Emacs, you get a
       | return on investment.
       | 
       | Welcome to the Emacs community! It's full of weirdos and wizards,
       | as well as regular folk. Stick around and I'm sure you'll make
       | friends in no time.
        
       | I_complete_me wrote:
       | IANAD I am not a developer.
       | 
       | I got into vim because it made total sense to me as a way to
       | transfer thoughts to words, I loved it , I lived it and I love it
       | and live it. Then I heard about emacs org-mode - after trying for
       | ages to find the "software to organise my life" (pick your
       | poison).
       | 
       | I found it to be totally workable, initially, via doom-emacs.
       | 
       | Then they said "You won't believe Magit".
       | 
       | I didn't leave my wife, instead I invited everyone into my world.
       | 
       | True, I had been fooling around looking for a wife. I hit on vim.
       | She was perfect. In her world there were people who knew all
       | about perfection - no surprise - until I met her beautiful
       | sister. I fell in love with her. Then I met a relation of _hers_
       | (her name was Magic, also beautiful) and I invited them all back
       | to what became their place where I am now welcome too.
        
       | grg0 wrote:
       | My Emacs setup typically involves:
       | 
       | - An LSP: https://emacs-lsp.github.io/lsp-mode/tutorials/CPP-
       | guide/ - Neotree to browse the file system:
       | https://github.com/jaypei/emacs-neotree - Awesome-tab for tabs:
       | https://github.com/manateelazycat/awesome-tab
       | 
       | If you want more, look at the extensions section of the LSP page
       | and then go down the rabbit hole.
       | 
       | I likewise do not use Doom or any of the bundled variants because
       | I want full control and understanding of my config. But those
       | variants are still useful to learn what's out there and
       | selectively add things to your mix.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-01 23:00 UTC)