Thread by @zckzck

A lot of #programmers are intimidated by powerful, expert tools, like #emacs.

But not everyone has the same experience! I've talked to a lot of programmers who think Emacs is a difficult tool to learn.

It's not.

It's a deep tool. There's a lot in it, but you don't have to learn it all at once!

Heck, you don't ever need to learn all of it.

If you can send an email, you can use Emacs.

For the past six years, I've been a co-organizer of Emacs NYC (emacsnyc.org). I gave a talk at EmacsConf 2020. I maintain a few Emacs packages.

I definitely enjoy both Emacs and its community.

Here's what you should do in your first five minutes with Emacs.

We're going to use Emacs like a basic text editor.

We won't memorize any shortcuts, and we won't rely on any esoteric knowledge.

Install Emacs with the instructions at gnu.org/software/emacs….

Then start it up! See? Not so scary! This looks like a lot of other text editors.

There is a menu bar, buttons to press, and a blinking cursor.

See the menu bar? Click File > Visit New File.

Type "myFile.txt", and press enter. You just opened a file!

Easy like Notepad.

Type a sentence, and see that it gets inserted into the file.

You can use the arrow keys to move around in the file, Home and End to navigate to the beginning and end of the line.

Easy like Sublime Text.

To save the file, we can click the large button that says "Save".

Easy like TextEdit.

The last thing we need to do is quit Emacs. You can use the window decorations from your operating system to close the window, or go to File > Quit.

Easy like Atom.

Emacs can be very complicated, but if you stick to doing simple things, it can be very easy to use.

Easy like JEdit.

Easy like TextMate.

Easy like gedit.

...

Easy like Emacs.