hit 'q' to dismiss intro page and go directly to scratch buffer<p>M-x customize gives a menu to change those lisp variables people are always mentioning.
If you'd like a whole book on this topic, I can't recommend Mickey Petersen's "Mastering Emacs" enough: <a href="https://www.masteringemacs.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.masteringemacs.org/</a>
I wish they told me about <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs</a>!<p>Also, the extended MELPA package universe. This and (use-package) allowing me not to worry about installing hundreds of packages really transformed Emacs into a productivity behemoth.<p><a href="http://melpa.org/#/getting-started" rel="nofollow">http://melpa.org/#/getting-started</a>
My favorite thing I wish they'd told me about emacs:<p>M-x shell<p>Run a shell (or shells) inside emacs. Great for long running apps like servers. You can search back through the output using normal Emacs search commands. For me, one of the killer features of Emacs.<p>Rename the shell buffer to something else to start another shell.
You NEED to learn about keyboard macros. And C-/ (which is undo).<p>Actually, it helps to be around other emacs users. I've seen people do something magic and I stop them so I can learn the trick. Usually they have to do it again before they can explain it because most emacs users have everything "in their fingers". Musicians are the same.<p>I would credit emacs with 50% of my productivity. Learn it well. It pays huge rewards.
That I could switch from Vim and still have access to nearly all the vim keybindings and motions that I use in real Vim.<p>I've been using vim + evil (and prior iterations of evil) for probably ~5 years now, and it really is the best of both worlds for me.
As far as I know, Emacs users are disabling Intro page at all.<p>Also I can't suggest to use M-x customize because it writes some code into your init.el file. For me, it's important to keep this file as simple as possible with my code only.<p>But, in case if you're using Emacs for some simple stuff then M-x customize is ok.
<p><pre><code> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
</code></pre>
will disable the startup screen entirely so it always goes to the scratch buffer.<p><i>C-h b</i> shows all the key bindings, and <i>C-h f</i> will describe any command (and give access to the source where it was defined).