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Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)

www.jesshamrick.com Books & learning Tutorials & guides Software engineering Candidate

Resurfaced independently across 3 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
3
submitters
3
observed span
2015–2022
peak thread · 257 comments
423 pts
latest 20+ return · 2018-12-04
423 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

I have yet to encounter anything that can match the sheer flexibility of Emacs. For example I am currently using Org mode to write some documentation complete with hyper-links, tables, foot notes and the option to export the results as LaTeX, HTML, Open-Office, and so on with just a few keypresses. It's not just an editor, or an IDE, or even a windowing system - it is a cross-platform computing environment that can be fashioned to exactly suit whatever purpose…

The best thing (IMO) about this guide is that it does not start with a gazillion lines of Elisp code to add to .emacs.d/init.el. I think people should be allowed to experience plain vanilla Emacs and decide for themselves what they want to change. If we just tell them "oh, you definitely want these modes enabled and these settings to these values", I feel they are somehow robbed of the best part of Emacs, namely figuring out what you want…

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
555

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
300

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2015-04-07Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)First breakoutsea6ear12643
2018-12-04Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)Best thread · Latest 20+ point returnsytelus423257
2022-03-10Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)graderjs60