I have been using (vanilla) Emacs as my primary editor for the last 4 years.<p>I have an elaborate setup for writing Clojure, Javascript and Rust [https://github.com/shivekkhurana/.emacs.d]. But sometimes it just breaks down.
Either it throws an error that I can't debug.<p>Or it stops activating modes that I hooked to specific buffers. TBH, I don't even know what major and minor modes are. And if two major modes can be active at the same time?<p>1. What are some good resources on Emacs?
2. If you use Emacs as your primary editor, how long did it take you to understand enough internals to be able to debug issues?
3. If you use doom/spacemacs, do you feel the bloat?<p>Thanks
As another user pointed out the manual is pretty good. The tutorial is good as long as you keep in mind that it focuses a lot on keybindings, which look poorly motivated when you are a novice. However, knowing those keybindings, which are also used by GNU Readline (and hence pervasive in many text applications including most shells), is fundamental to be comfortable with Emacs.<p>I'd personally start with a clean .emacs (or init.el) and grow it slowly as new needs arise. I've been using Emacs for more than 15 years and my .emacs is less than 100 LOC. This is partly thanks to use-package, which makes it easy to add package customizations in a controlled way.<p>Another good resource is Mastering Emacs.
Looked through the repo readme, as I had free time. First advice, enable emacs as a daemon, if you haven't already. And replace most of emacs shortcuts you use, as in keyboard shortcuts or EDITOR to emacsclient, helps with startup.<p>-> Or it stops activating modes that I hooked to specific buffers.
Maybe because some buffers try to activate two or more modes by default. Do try looking through that. One major mode and many minor at the same time is what works.<p>1. Resources, primarily, documentation for emacs, org-mode. And few blogs which extensively do emacs articles. Google search does work good for those.<p>2. It is not like you'd turn into an expert after debugging just some issues. It will take time, a lot of it probably. And you will feel like you did waste some time. Take what you want from it.<p>3. I used doom for some time, before making my own config. If you feel configuring is time consuming, you can choose one (Doom/Space) and forget about it. With the types of devices we normally have, a few seconds is nothing. but preparing your own config gives you a new look into emacs, and helps in future trouble-shooting as you know what is in the configs.
1. M-x info
(Major or minor modes) 23.1 Emacs Manual - Major and Minor Modes<p>Two major modes can not be active at the same time, one major mode, N minor modes to a buffer.<p>For me, my emacs config, less is more. I think often about which packages can be commented out of my .emacs.<p>2. I rarely debug issues-- I dont really program my editor much, preferring macros or regex to manipulate buffers, though if I am having editor / external package issues and am in a rush I'll just use a temp emacs -Q, but my config doesn't change that often anymore, so I havent yet had to do that this year. I've been through several emacs bankruptcies over the years, at least one because I couldn't figure out why everything sucked/was slow.<p>3. I used spacemacs for a while (6m-1y ish), I liked the layers concept and it was easy to use, but there is a lot more to it, so its more complex than emacs. Further, emacs+use-package+which-key got me most of the experience I liked from it, with less resource use, less tricky bugs, and I was already more comfortable with emacs bindings than vi.
Just use Uncle Dave's Emacs videos:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39u8K12rXHE&list=UUDEtZ7AKmwS0_GNJog01D2g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39u8K12rXHE&list=UUDEtZ7AKmw...</a><p>Every other resource absolutely sucks.
In my experience as a spacemacs user for the last 2.5 years it’s mainly a wrapper that’s just comfy enough to not need to really dig into emacs proper.<p>It has enough defaults and minor tweaks to live in org-mode adequately.<p>It probably does keep you from really making it your own and developing the elisp basics to set things up yourself.
The standard emacs manual really is good. Sadly, it isn't always installed by default because of the GFDL¹.<p>For instance to take your specific question on modes, the manual has the following to say about major modes:<p><i>Major modes provide specialized facilities for working on a
particular file type, such as a C source file (see Programs), or a
particular type of non-file buffer, such as a shell buffer (see
Shell). Major modes are mutually exclusive; each buffer has one and
only one major mode at any time.</i><p>Emacs also comes with <i>very</i> complete documentation for elisp in the info docs, which covers fixing problems and writing new code. There is whole section on working the built-in debuggers tucked away in the elisp manual.<p>¹ For example, on Debian you need emacs-common-non-dfsg from non-free to receive all the standard documentation.
Not an answer to your specific questions, but my recommendation i always<p>1. Learn as much elisp as you can<p>2. Learn the help system<p>3. <a href="https://emacs.stackexchange.com" rel="nofollow">https://emacs.stackexchange.com</a><p>4. Bind eval-region to easy to reach key for testing and troubleshooting<p>Emacs is a what I would call an extreme case of a positive feedback loop application, the more effort and time you put in learning it, the more you get back. This is of course true for almost any application, but with Emacs being a complete text manipulation system more effort is required.
<i>What are some good resources on Emacs?</i><p>Google.<p><i>how long did it take you to debug issues?</i><p>For many years, I googled for little elisp snippets I didn't understand.<p><i>If you use doom/spacemacs, do you feel the bloat?</i><p>Doom and spacemacs users care more about limiting time to productivity.
If they cared about bloat, they'd have stuck with vi.