this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Why the journey of learning Emacs and Elisp in 2023 is so hard ? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by SuLinab@alien.top to c/emacs
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Hey there.

I'm a fan of Emacs, like you folks.

I use Emacs org every day, mainly for my teaching class. Furthermore, I learn Emacs for three years ago.

But I struggle to achieve my learning of Elisp. For example, taping lisp and elisp code with evil/lispy is a true nightmare (I use Prelude with few modes, btw), not to mention when I type code block within org.

I knew the learning curve is hard. But I didn't expect that much frustration to learn it. The documentation is austere. So few examples are given. There is too little blogs or books about Emacs, specifically about org and babel.

To illustrate my point, let's take the «*this*» kind-of macro in babel, that I found TODAY by CHANCE in this page : https://orgmode.org/manual/Results-of-Evaluation.html.

It's a game changer for a lot of my code, and would deserve a whole page to illustrate it. But no, it's given in a «niche» example.

Don't be mistaken, I found Babel/Org/Emacs wonderful, but what a pain in the ass to learn it !

For such an old and wise piece of software, I can't understand why we don't have a smooth learning experience with Emacs. A lot of people could benefit Org/Emacs, without the big hinder of the «lack» of documentation (mostly examples).

Am I the only one to experience this ?

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[–] arthurno1@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

But I struggle to achieve my learning of Elisp.

I think it is on your side. Sorry to tell it open, but Lisp(s) are very easy to learn and pick up. I don't know what you are teaching and what your expertize is in, but for me Lisp was as easy as VisualBasic.

The documentation is austere.

Emacs and Emacs Lisp are by fart the most documented Lisp applications. I can agree that it might be a bit outdated in terminology, and both terminology and API need some acclimatization since they predate the terminology we use today, and Lisp is a bit different from your ordinary Python/C/Java-like language. But I wouldn't say it is very hard; just different.

I found TODAY by CHANCE in this page

It has been in your Emacs all along, for a long time, since it is a part of Org manual that comes with your Emacs. You have to be more curious about what you are doing if you want to learn it and understand it. Nobody is going to throw knowledge at you; that happens only in classes. As a teacher, you should know that better than anyone else. If you want to learn and develop as Elisp programmer you will have to dig in yourself, be curious, search, read manual. Emacs Lisp is one of the most discoverable and documented Lisps and probably programming languages at all. You can C-h f to see docs directly in Emacs, and than just 's' in help window to see the source code. There are manuals for many parts of Emacs, including Org, that are built into your Emacs; you have debugging tools and lots of code to look at. You can also use Helpful which shows you the source code per default.

we don't have a smooth learning experience with Emacs

A learning experience is very subjective. It depends on many things. One of them is a person's ability as well as the will to learn.

Am I the only one to experience this ?

Probably not the only one, but also probably not the most representative example either. I am sorry. I am not trying to put you down as a person, but just suggesting that you should be more active, curious and looking for help yourself. As said, people can only provide you with manuals and material, but you have to look it up yourself, unless you can find an Emacs course. There are some online, perhaps that suits you better? Might be worth your time and small money investment. Perhaps look at some videos, or simply search for Elisp tutorials. There are some around.