I followed this blog for a while and loved it! Strongly recommended for Emacs beginners.<p>Also, one thing beginners miss is how great it is to use an existing configuration to learn. I've personally used @bodil's config from here[1], it's pretty comprehensive and awesome. If you are a beginner though, you should totally start with @bbatsov's Emacs Prelude[2].<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/bodil/emacs.d" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bodil/emacs.d</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude</a>
If you're on OSX and want a good Emacs, go to <a href="https://github.com/railwaycat/emacs-mac-port" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/railwaycat/emacs-mac-port</a> and read the installation instructions under the Homebrew section. It follows the official Emacs repo pretty closely, but has useful OSX additions (smooth scrolling, gesture support [font size e.g] and more).
I would personally recommend using vim bindings in emacs, as they are (in my opinion) easier to make sense of and more intuitive. However, I'm sure this book is a great resource for all the other stuff and it seems very well put-together.
I've always been an emacs user but have only recently gotten serious about customizing it to replace other applications I normally use. If anyone has bought this and at least skimmed through I'd love to hear your thoughts before I drop $35.99 to see for myself.
I'm really enjoying using Cask to manage my Emacs packages:<p><a href="https://cask.readthedocs.org/" rel="nofollow">https://cask.readthedocs.org/</a><p>You maintain a list of packages in a Cask file and run "cask" to automatically download and install them from a repository like MELPA. Like Gemfile or requirements.txt, but for Emacs.<p>I found this really reduced the number of elisp snippets I've had to write or grab from around the web. Most popular packages are on MELPA, and there's usually a more polished way to accomplish things I was hacking together myself.
I hadn't tried Magit before now, but on the suggestion of this blog I'm giving it a look through. Looks good so far. I also enjoy the style the blog is using: anyone know what backend the author is using?
An older but still interesting book, just in case: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writing-GNU-Emacs-Extensions-Glickstein/dp/1565922611" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Writing-GNU-Emacs-Extensions-Glickstei...</a>
I haven't read this, but from the contents it seems like you can learn everything there is in the book from the official Emacs GNU documentation:<p><a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/in...</a>