This first post is about how I, as a beginner, have been using Emacs.

This might be interesting for non-users, could be relevant for fellow Emacs noobs, and will definitely be hair-pulling for anyone with more experience than I have (which, as you'll see, is very little). I have an idea to make this a series, with a new post whenever I feel like I've reached a new stage in my Emacs evolution.

I'll divide this into sections, ordered roughly by the amount I've spent on each.

Taking notes

The killer app for me has always been Org mode. At work, I always have my main notes.org file open, and use capture and refile to sort my to-dos and quick notes as I go through the day. When focusing on a single customer/project, I usually have that org file open as well.

I'll reserve a longer writeup on my Org use for a future post, especially in a few weeks when I'm back at work and in my usual workflow again. In short, Emacs + Org mode is an absurdly powerful note-taking toolset, and I know I've only scratched the surface with my use so far.

Writing this blog

Very early on, I took to using Emacs to write this blog. It felt like a natural evolution of my Emacs use. This site is written in Jekyll, so 95% of the time I'm just writing posts in Markdown. The rest of the time I'm editing HTML or CSS.

I've configured Emacs to help write the posts in Markdown. I use Markdown Mode, which provides a slew of helpful commands for writing & editing Markdown. Recently I configured Emacs to use the Georgia font when in a Markdown buffer, so that the posts have a similar look when I'm editing them to how they'll look when published.

I also have some custom functions for Jekyll, so I don't have to write boilerplate like the Front Matter by hand. I have lots of ideas for more, maybe even enough to write a new plugin along the lines of some of those I see on GitHub.

Configuring Emacs 🙃

My original config was literate and inspired by (i.e. lifted nearly wholesale from) Derek Taylor's DistroTube series on Configuring Emacs. I hooked onto his explanatory way of walking step-by-step through the process of building a sane config, so this is where I started.

My current Emacs config is on GitHub for anyone interested.

I started using Emacs about 6 months ago,¹ and my configuration reflects that I'm still very much a noob in this space. I'm learning, and completely fearless about trying something new or living with something kludgy. I know I'll eventually learn how to do something better, and will slowly remove the duct-taped parts with something better (hopefully simpler).

Since, I've gone away from having a literate config, as I found it easier to just be writing Elisp with comments, and have scrapped a great deal of the code to narrow down to my core use cases. I feel very uncomfortable with config that I don't understand (which is why Doom Emacs and Spacemacs do not appeal to me).

A few times I've used an LLM to generate handy functions. I'm happy doing this, as a first step to learning how to write Elisp. The generated code probably isn't idiomatic, but when they work, I don't care - it's a first step to me learning how to do this myself.

My current priorities for my Emacs config:

• Primary: Support my blogging (Jekyll/GH Pages) & personal organization.
• Secondary: Support my dev projects, which range from little Ruby scripts to full Flutter apps.
• Look-and-feel on par with a modern editor like Zed or Sublime Text.
• Be mostly understandable to me when I go to read & tweak it.

There are things I don't need or want from Emacs right now, that perhaps might sound foolish to a more advanced user:

• Right now I don't have the capacity to learn Emacs commands, so I don't really ever use C-x or M-x directly.
  • I have a leader key bound to SPC, and SPC SPC binds to M-x which opens up Consult to help me fuzzy-find the relevant command.
  • I also have a slew of handcrafted mnemonic bindings registered in General.
• I prefer my own handcrafted mnemonic bindings to Transient menus. There's so much already to learn, I don't want to also have to learn someone else's bindings.
• I don't use the much-vaunted Magit. After over a decade of daily git terminal use, I'm good with what I've got. This means I usually have a terminal open alongside Emacs.

My future goals & wishes for my Emacs config:

• Remove Elpaca and just do native package management. Done!
• Use Emacs-native packages as possible.
  • Emacs 30 will probably help a lot with this (e.g. with completions)
• Limit Vim bindings/motions (Evil) to only editing inside text buffers, and slowly replace my mnemonic bindings with Emacs commands.
• Support code suggestions and documentation in my main languages, which these days are JS/TS, Ruby, and Dart.

What I still haven't figured out:

• Finding and ironing out every little UI wrinkle, especially nit-picky things that I know require some complicated config to wrangle.
• Good terminal emulation, and whether I should use Eshell, and if so, getting it to not suck to use compared to any terminal app, or if I should use a full terminal emulator like Vterm. I've read folks suggesting to just use Emacs commands/packages directly instead of going to the terminal, but I'm not so far in my journey just yet.
• Any standard Emacs key commands. Right now I'm fully in Evil and custom keybindings, and I'm fine with this.
• Full programming support, to par with what I get from VS Code or Zed. I'm lost in LSP's and Eglot and Treesitter. There's just too much complexity and rough edges, and I'm a bit lost with only pieces of a map to work from. Hopefully the picture becomes clearer over 2025 and the Emacs 30 releases, or I'll just 'get good' and grok it eventually.

Coding

As stated in the Config section, I've gone back and forth on trying to get a good LSP setup. I think I might be expecting too much, especially when I'm coding in a dynamic language like JS or Ruby, and hoping for completions that the LSP simply isn't set up to provide (but I can get from an IDE like RubyMine...).

I did have some success with the Dart LSP, so I may do my next Flutter app in Emacs, or I might warm up my very rusty C# or Java skills and see if I can get a little project going in them.

Abandoned packages for consuming the world in text

I'm a text fanatic. My fascination with Emacs comes from this passion; if I could, I would orient my entire life around text buffers, and the reading & processing of them. Text just feels right to me in a way that rich graphical applications don't. It's much easier for me to craft a pleasing text-based workflow than it is to find a graphical UI with adequate usability.²

It then comes as little surprise that I've dabbled in Emacs packages like EWW for web browsing and Elfeed for consuming RSS feeds. I've quickly abandoned all the ones I've used, but might return again at some point when I'm more comfortable with configuration.

I used Elfeed for the longest of these, a few weeks, but stopped as I was too frustrated by the UI, which I felt difficult if not impossible to configure to my liking. Again, maybe I'll come back at some point.

Conclusion: happy minimums, and kludges abound!

To summarize, I'm joyfully and productively using Emacs for some important (to me) core tasks, even though I know I'm just seeing the very tip of the iceberg.

I've been dipping my toes into the community, especially through Sacha Chua's praiseworthy work in compiling news. I watched along with Emacs Conf 2024, inspired by the community involvement I saw.

It's exciting to me to know that there's a vast amount of awesome things I can do with this tool, both built-in and also from the community. I'm giddy to see where I'll be in another 6 months' time!