{"id":8772,"date":"2020-04-03T11:45:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T15:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8772"},"modified":"2020-04-03T11:45:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T15:45:47","slug":"ten-tips-for-getting-started-with-emacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8772","title":{"rendered":"Ten Tips for Getting Started With Emacs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Opensource.com<\/a>, Seth Kenlon an interesting post on 10 tips for getting started with Emacs<\/a>. There are a couple of items I disagree with but most of the post is good advice.<\/p>\n

His first piece of advice is to start with the GUI. This makes sense for almost everyone. The advantage for the n00b is that you have the menus and mouse to help. I\u2019m always ambivalent about that. On the one hand, the menus do<\/i> help n00bs discover the shortcuts and get things done when they forget a shortcut. On the other hand, they can become a crutch and a habit. One of the ways that Emacs helps me be more productive is that I can do everything from the keyboard. I never use the mouse even though it\u2019s easy with my MacBook Pro\u2019s trackpad so I\u2019m inclined to tell beginners to jump in and learn the shortcuts, using the mouse only when they get stuck and never for things like selecting text. When I started with Emacs, I made heavy use of the Emacs Cheat Sheet<\/a> and mostly avoided the menus.<\/p>\n

Another assertion that I don\u2019t agree with is that it\u2019s all right to \u201cshare.\u201d By that he means that it\u2019s fine to use other editors if they fit a particular task better than Emacs. I\u2019ve been through that before<\/a> and lots of people disagree but using more than one editor would make me crazy because of muscle memory. Plenty of folks assure me that it\u2019s not a problem for them but I am not one of those people.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re new to Emacs, take a look at Kenlon\u2019s post. It\u2019s full of good advice and suggests an attitude of not worrying too much about \u201cthe Emacs way\u201d but just start using it and see what works for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Opensource.com, Seth Kenlon an interesting post on 10 tips for getting started with Emacs. There are a couple of items I disagree with but most of the post is good advice. His first piece of advice is to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-8772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-emacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8773,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8772\/revisions\/8773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}