this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Emacs
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These are four different things (along with Elisp), are you trying to learn them all together? This is a recipe for frustration and burnout. You can learn Emacs bottom up (starting with Elisp) or top down (Starting with Org, then Emacs). Pick an approach and stick to it.
This makes no sense -- Emacs' documentation is among the best for projects of its kind. The Emacs manual, Elisp manual, EINTR manual and Org manual have answered almost every question I've had, with very few exceptions.
The entirety of Emacs' source is open to you, and that's without including every package you have installed. Every usage of a macro or function is an example.
xref-find-references
is your friend.This may require a change in mindset. The reason I need books or blog posts to learn (say) Zig or Nix is because the manuals are out of date or publicly available source is unreadably dense. For the above given reasons, this is not true of Emacs.
The only time I've needed blog posts to learn about Emacs is for discovery -- bringing attention to the existence of a feature is something Emacs does struggle with, despite the introduction of new commands like
shortdoc
. Even then, I prefer to just look up the source or the manual to learn about a feature once I know it exists.*this*
is only useful for post-processing babel blocks (as I understand it), and it is mentioned in the section on post-processing babel blocks. It is explained with examples too. I don't see where else it should go.Your idea of a smooth learning curve comes baked in with assumptions I don't share. The manuals can teach you everything you need to know to beat Emacs into the shape you want. I've had a much smoother time learning Emacs than I've had learning any other complex piece of software, like Bash, Systemd, Blender or (heaven forbid) Nix.