

Ask HN: How do you learn emacs? - adrusi

I'm a Vim user, but I use Haskell a lot and it's not uncommon for me to find myself using clojure or scheme/racket. Vim is kind of the new hip thing so there are plenty of free resources online for learning it, and that's how I learned it about a year ago. Unfortunately, emacs seems to be less mainstream right now so there aren't as many resources, and what is available tends to be the very basics, that are found in emacs's built in tutorial.<p>In vim you usually don't learn about new setups by learning everything possible in the editor and coming up with a new way to use it, you take pieces from other people's setups and make your own. I assume it's similar in emacs which is an even more monolithic beast. Where can you go to find people sharing their setups?
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subsection1h
I learned Emacs by reading the Emacs manual[1], the Org mode manual[2] (Org
mode was the main reason I switched to Emacs), the Emacs Wiki[3], and other
people's config files[4][5].

Note that I didn't _use_ other people's config files, such as the Emacs
Starter Kit that another commenter referenced; I read them. I've previously
used other people's config files, skeleton apps, etc. when attempting to learn
new technologies, and I always ended up regretting it. With Emacs I started
from scratch and took only what I needed from other people's setups. This
worked very well for me.

I don't know if you have any interest in using Org mode, but I'd like to
mention that using Org mode to create a personal wiki has been one of the best
decisions I've ever made. I previously had hundreds of files (.txt, .doc,
.xls, etc.) containing notes for the subjects I've studied, and these files
weren't interlinked like wiki pages, nor could they be converted to HTML and
published to the web with a single command. Sharing knowledge with my team and
family is so efficient now. I can't recommend Org mode enough for notetaking.

[1] <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/>

[2] <http://orgmode.org/manual/>

[3] <http://www.emacswiki.org/>

[4] <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryDotEmacs>

[5]
[https://github.com/search?type=Repositories&q=Emacs](https://github.com/search?type=Repositories&q=Emacs)

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smerritt
Probably the best way to get started is to grab an Emacs 24 pretest and use
technomancy's Emacs Starter Kit: <https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-
starter-kit>

Emacs 24 gives you a solid package manager, and the starter kit gives you a
good solid spot to build on.

From there, install the packages you want. If you want haskell-mode, just M-x
package-install [return] haskell-mode. Get the full package list with M-x
package-list-packages.

~~~
adrusi
will try

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__ingrid__
I know some emacs users who post their config files on github (myself
included). You can do a quick search for "emacs config" and get a lot of
results, some better documented than others.

See:
[https://github.com/search?q=emacs+config&type=Everything...](https://github.com/search?q=emacs+config&type=Everything&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1)

I'm not going to post my own because I'm still new (and it is in some serious
need of documentation) but here is a link to my friend's configuration, from
which I got most of my stuff. His file organization is a bit intimidating at
first if you're not used to it (each addon that has more than a few lines of
code gets it's own folder), but it's actually great for outsiders reading his
config, and it makes it easier to leech just the bits they want of his config.

[https://github.com/bmac/emacs/tree/4999800dd54975fb5222d30d5...](https://github.com/bmac/emacs/tree/4999800dd54975fb5222d30d5f4faaf43458a4f5)

If you're coming from vim though, I'd suggest googling emacs versions of the
plugins you already use though. Almost everything of that nature gets ported,
whenever I see a plugin I like for editor (x) I can usually find an emacs
version in minutes.

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cag_ii
The emacs wiki is a good place to start:

<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryDotEmacs>

> Unfortunately, emacs seems to be less mainstream right now

I don't know about the popularity of emacs vs. VI right now (I'd suspect that
it's fairly close), but there is no shortage of current and active emacs info
on the web. There's plenty of active .emacs files can be found on github for
example.

Some other sources of info:

<http://www.masteringemacs.org/>

<http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/Emacs>

~~~
adrusi
<http://www.google.com/trends?q=vim%2C+emacs>

edit: this is misleading, "vim" seems to have more unrelated meanings than
"emacs"

edit 2: this much more narrow but less biased comparison is more reliable:
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=vim+editor%2C+emacs+editor...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=vim+editor%2C+emacs+editor&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

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gharbad
Alternatively, you can set up Vim to play more nicely with Haskell and
clojure. I assure you that you don't need to use <editor X> to program in
<language Y>.

~~~
adrusi
Well I have been using haskell and clojure in vim for a few months now, but
since most haskellers and lispers use emacs, I figured there must be a reason.

~~~
__ingrid__
I would guess that's for other reasons. I often associate Haskell and Lisp
with academics, and emacs with a slightly older crowd, and there is some over
lap there. Of course, I don't think they should be strictly limited to these
crowds, this is just a guess based off personal observation.

