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I learned the basics of Lisp from this
book, which you can get online for free. Although it's about Common Lisp you
can translate most of it easily to Elisp, just (require 'cl-lib) and you will
be fine. For another quicker but great introduction to Lisp I recommend
reading the first three chapters of
PAIP

The old Writing Gnu Emacs Extensions
still serves as a good introduction to learn Emacs APIs. I also learned a lot
more about Elisp reading nullprogram.

Reading code of small packages which solve something you are interested in is
another great way to further improve your Elisp skills.

You make an interesting point. Though I have heard of the research you allude to, and of a book that makes a similar argument (Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes), I must confess to being a bit skeptical.

If it's true that adding money to the equation makes developers lose motivation, how do you explain all the successful kickstarters out there, all the successfull donation-ware software, or all the successfull commercial software in the world?

Also, specifically on the subject of Magit, do you now expect Magit's lead developer to do less work on Magit now that he's fully funded? I know I personally expect great things now that he can focus completely on Magit without having to worry about money.

About your implication that Emacs developers are writing Emacs code for fun: I'm not sure if that's universally true. I think in most cases they're scratching an itch: they have some problem and they want to solve it, and incidentally also want to share the code with the world. They're not going to suddenly stop having problems they want to solve if they get money, and I don't think they're going to stop actually solving them or sharing the results if they get money either.

On the other hand, I do think there's some truth in what you say. I think the easiest way to turn a fun hobby in to drudgery is to be forced to do it day in and day out, whether you feel like it or not, with loss of control over direction or quality, with having to answer to all sorts of people that don't understand what you do and don't care about, and only care about using you as a tool to make themselves more money -- in short, by turning the hobby in to a stressful job. But as you can see, there are a lot more factors that go in to making a hobby in to a stressful job than merely adding money.

> It is a real Lisp and a good starting point

While not directly related, there are a lot of classic Common Lisp and Scheme books that while not explicitly the same as Emacs Lisp, wrinkle the readers brain in a way that is useful for coding in emacs lisp and becoming a better programmer in general IMO.

All of the texts I have read that are listed on A Scheme Bookshelf and A Lisp Bookshelf have been great reads; also they are excellent texts for reference on how to make great technical literature on par with Donald Knuth's books with respect to quality of presentation.

Writing GNU Emacs Extensions is still mostly relevant, despite its age, which IMO is a testament to how timeless Emacs is.

An Introduction to Emacs Lisp is great, and also included with every Emacs installation.

I agree with the recommendations for SICP - it's great.

In addition to the MIT videos, there are videos from Brian Harvey's SICP class at UC Berkeley. They're available both on YouTube and in iTunes.

However, I'll admit that I found SICP a bit overwhelming at first. For context, I'd been programming (primarily Python) for a couple years, but it was my first exposure to Lisp. I ended up taking a brief break from it to work my way through The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. It only took a week or two and at the end I was much more comfortable diving into SICP.

Not everyone likes the Schemer books - they're quite distinctive - but I loved them. I found them particularly helpful in really groking recursion and continuations.

;Default font:

(set-frame-font "Monaco Regular 18")

;Set the background to black:

(set-background-color "black")

You can copy those lines to your scratch buffer ,"C-x b *scratch*", place the cursor at the end of the line and hit "C-x C-e" and they should take immediate effect.

Steve Yegge did a nice post about emacs configuration that is a pretty good intro into how to organize all of your modes.

If you want to harness the true power of emacs, you will have to learn a little lisp. If you've never seen lisp before, I would recommend starting with John McCarthy's original introductory paper. The place to go from there would be
Glickstein's Writing GNU Emacs Extensions. Though some of the particular configuration information is a bit dated, it is a perfect introduction to programming in emacs lisp (elisp). Last but not least, there is the Programming in Emacs Lisp online resource at gnu.org. Hope that helps!

If you like reading about computer history, I really enjoyed Stephen Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. (There's a pdf floating around if you google search it, but I don't think it would be good form to directly link it since the book is still in print.) It's a really fascinating look at the early hacker cultures in MIT and Silicon Valley from the late 1950s through the early 1980s.

There's actually an interesting literature on extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards, and the upshot is often that getting paid for something reduces intrinsic reward, which can be a powerful motivator. Getting small amounts of money could, counterintuitively, actually disincentivize work on Emacs.

There's an interesting book on this phenomenon called Drive: https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805

> do I have to keep on and believe Emacs is a better env for my needs?

Why did you switch to emacs? What was vim lacking that you feel emacs can offer?

Have you tried using netrw to edit remote files in vim? What about vim's autocomplete didn't work for you?

If you're already comfortable in vim, you might get more mileage out of just learning to use vim more effectively.

If you're determined to switch, just wait for a time when you know things will be a little slow for a week or so, and switch cold turkey. Maybe read a book about it in the mean time. You'll get used to it in no time!

I'm reading through this. It's out of date, but has still been really helpful to me understanding the logic of emacs etc. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-GNU-Emacs-Nutshell-handbook/dp/1565921526/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518041820&sr=8-3&keywords=emacs+oreilly

It's very cheap, too, which is a big bonus over more modern ones.

The Onyx Boox line of tablets/ereaders are essentially Android machines. They run any Android apps, including their ebook apps, and have been around for a long time, many models with different screen sizes, etc., it can be a little confusing to sort through the different models, some are older, lower resolution.

https://onyxboox.com/

Termux and associated packages should run okay, but do a little checking to confirm, e.g.,:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293825

Nova Pro model seems now like the 'goldilocks' boox model, good screen, recent android, not too expensive:

https://www.amazon.com/BOOX-Nova-Pro-Reader-Android/dp/B07L95KPFM/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=boox&qid=1568478565&s=electronics&sr=1-3

I switched to evil/spacemacs a few years ago when my RSI was worsening to see if it helped. It helped for a short time but then my RSI started coming back. Vim keybindings can also cause RSI.

​

However I don't regret learning evil. I really enjoy modal editing. Also, trying out spacemacs exposed me to lots of cool packages I didn't know about before. Though I'm using my own config these days, whenever I'm trying out a new language I usually check the spacemacs config to see what packages are installed there.

​

Over the years I've tried various things that have been more or less helpful for RSI:

- Conquering carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries

- http://www.workrave.org/

- Voice coding (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI, https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/aenea)

- Mind-body prescription (it's a bit wacky, I don't agree with all of it, but I think there's something to it & a lot of people seem to find it helpful)

- Standing desk

- Back massage (https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Tail-Ball-Roller-Corded/dp/B0078PX01G/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=ball+rope+back+massage&qid=1558366141&s=gateway&sr=8-4)

- Exercise

You can install spacemacs and other custom configs as a way of discovering what's out there and how to do things, and then put the things you like and understand in your own init.el.

This is a good book to get started: Writing GNU Emacs Extensions: Editor Customizations and Creations with Lisp.

Just go slow, try out lots of configs for ideas, build up your customizations over time.

If you're serious about this, and want to do it right, I'd recommend locating a copy of Writing GNU Emacs Extensions by Bob Glickstein.

While it is a little out of date with respect to recent versions of emacs (some things are easier now, and a few "best practices" have changed), it is still an excellent overview of writing emacs extensions.

I'd be a little cautious about following it's tutorials due to the previously mentioned changes (you will still need to do some additional manual reading), but as far as a starting point and overview of what is involved, I can't think of a better resource.

I'd recommend watching Writing Games in Emacs for a simple tic-tac-toe mode and then reading Writing GNU Emacs Extensions which culminates in a crossword mode.

1993 at the University of Oslo computer science lab. Not sure exactly what computer, because they had lots of different ones. Might well be a terminal hooked up to some SunOS server.

I'm also an author, and my book that's coming out next year was 100% written in Emacs. My two previous books, too.

Emacs 24 Reference Manual page 141 "Accessing Compressed Files" http://www.amazon.com/dp/9881327717

My own question was lazy:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Org-Mode-Reference-Manual/dp/9881327709/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1407248946&sr=8-5&keywords=org+mode

Maybe Adobe Indesign? It may be possible to torture LaTeX into doing stuff like this -- https://www.amazon.com/COCHISE-STRONGHOLD-Rock-Climbing-West/dp/161850102X/ -- but it's not fun.