If you’re looking for an introduction to The Way of Emacs, there’s a long article that explores the Emacs way and why it’s worthwhile embracing despite what seems, at first, to be a formidable learning curve. There are a couple of major themes:
- Emacs as a framework providing a huge number of functionalities including such non-editor tasks as playing music, reading and writing email, reading RSS feeds, displaying and annotating PDF files, reading ebooks, and much, much more.
- Emacs as a philosophy: freedom, longevity, and even minimalism.
The article’s (unnamed) author uses a wide swath of Emacs functionality including Org-mode, Magit, Tramp, Dired, Mu4e, Org-roam, Nov.el, EMMS, Daemon mode, password management, REPL modes, and more. The article is a good introduction to the things you can do from within Emacs. After you read it, you’ll know why so many of us never want to leave Emacs.
He also makes the point that Emacs is becoming a rarity in today’s software world. There’s no subscription model, no user lock-in, no planned obsolescence, and most importantly, your data remains your data. It’s all held locally and is in plain text. Even if Emacs magically disappeared, you’d still have access to your data using any other editor or even simply spooling it to the screen. Compare that to, say, Google Docs. Even if you manage to avoid getting your account closed for some unspecified violation of the ever shifting code of conduct, you’ll still lose your data when Google tires of maintaining the editor and sunsets it.
The longevity of Emacs is indisputable. It’s one of the oldest applications still in wide use. Those who don’t know what they’re talking about are fond of mocking Emacs as old technology of no current relevance. What they mean is it doesn’t have enough bling for them and isn’t mouse/menu driven. Meanwhile, Emacs is undergoing continuous development and constantly introducing technologies—Magit, Org, e.g.—that are shamelessly copied by all the “modern” editors. When we Emacsers hear this nonsense, we just smile and get on with our work using Emacs.
If you’re not an Emacs user and want your eyes opened, take a look at this article.