

Ask HN: How should I go about learning Emacs? - FreezerburnV

I've been a VIM user for a decent period of time. I'm not super advanced with motions, end up working in non-VIM environments most of the time, (with VIM bindings, such as with IntelliJ) and vimscript is almost completely unknown to me. And yes, I do know about EVIL mode.<p>But Emacs is something I've looked at over the years, something looks interesting but every time I try to use it I bounce off of it pretty hard. The best I've been able to do is a custom theme with EVIL mode on top of some configuration pack that someone has put together. It was usable, but every so often I would accidentally bump some arcane key combination and nothing would work anymore, or I'd have to put some limited knowledge of Emacs commands together with VIM commands to do something, etc. It just ended up being a pain that I didn't really know how to use, and I would go back to the comfort of VIM, or Sublime Text, IntelliJ, whatever.<p>So that's why I'm asking here: what's the best way for someone who's never really done anything with Emacs (and only limited things with LISPs) to get started, and hopefully not bounce off of it. (though I'll probably still install EVIL mode, because VIM text motions are a thing of beauty)
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mapleoin
There is a link on the frontpage about learning emacs right now:
[http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/05/how-to-learn-emacs-a-
hand-...](http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/05/how-to-learn-emacs-a-hand-drawn-
one-pager-for-beginners/)

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swah
A good reason to learn Emacs is to program Common Lisp or Clojure. Editing
Lisp it really shines; otherwise I'd say the risk of procrastination while
learning Emacs is huge.

