Re: Is there any good website for emacs newbie?

[William Case <billlinux@rogers.com>]

Hi Lung;

I am responding to your last post because it might be useful to you and
to others who are trying to use Emacs for the first time.

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 22:31 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> William Case 写道：
> > Hi SimpleCode;
> >
> > I am a newbie as well.  There are lots of tutorials around, but the one
> > that did the most for me was:
> >
> > http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/emacs-lisp-intro/html_mono/emacs-lisp-intro.html
> >
> > For two years I learnt emacs by rote and by copying.  Everything I tried
> > to do lead to errors and frustration.  It has taken me 5 or 6
> > intermittent hours of following the text and trying the few samples in
> > the emacs-lisp-intro to finally get it.  The intro is well written,
> > clear and covers the main concepts at a learnable pace.  Now that I
> > understand basic concepts of how emacs and lisp work, I love it.
> >
> > The site mentioned above is an HTML version of the GNU emacs-lisp intro
> > -- take your pick; the content is the same.
> >
> > On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 19:27 -0700, SimpleCode wrote:
> > > I am a emacs newbie but I like it.
> > >
> > It is worth the trouble.
> 
> Hi Bill, I have the same feeling.
> I always think the Emacs which is hard to use.So I normally use VIM. I
> thought it is comfortable for me.
> I just want to try Emacs because of the various Plug-in in it, and
> they are very powerful, especially for the programmer.
> 
> By the way, I don't wanna learn the emacs-lisp, also I don't know
> should I.

I recommend this tutorial, not because it will make you a lisp
programmer. It won't.  There is a long way to go before that happens.
But once you understand how Lisp and emacs work, anything you want to do
or anything you want to understand becomes exceedingly simple.  I can
see why professional programmers use Emacs.  Contrary to my newbie
belief, the Emacs environment does not get in the way of the real
programming task you may be trying to perform.  Everything that you
might want to do becomes intuitive, and if it isn't intuitive to you,
you can make it so that it is.

In the last couple of weeks since I have worked my way through the
tutorial, I can now without, confusion, frustration, anger and/or
disappointment customize any part of Emacs I want, understand functions
(commands) and how to read them, bind commands to keys, work in various
modes sometimes interchangeably, and on and on.

Two metaphors come to mind.  A good workman should understand how to use
his tools.  For me the tutorial was the same as learning how to sharpen
a chisel, knife or saw blade.  To extend the metaphor, I can now cut far
more materials into better shapes than ever could before on anything
else I have used.

The other metaphor is a comparison to the day that debits and credits in
accounting finally clicked into place.  That day a whole new balanced
view of the world opened up to me.  Lisp's mind twist into utter
simplicity is only matched by the simplicity of double entry
bookkeeping.

So -- to me, the Tutorial is worth the five or six hours it takes.  To
me -- it is the precursor to reading or studying anything else like
O'Reily publications and others.  And -- I highly recommend it to anyone
else starting out.



-- 
Regards Bill