I said, what is this

This is my emacs config. I scrounged around the internet for stuff I wanted, and like a good viking, dragged the good stuff back here. It’s in a .org file because organization is good, and I like collapsable sectioning and pretty text. I could organize it in a bunch of little .el files. I find that more annoying to navigate, and half the files would be comments anyways. Most of the packages I use, I include a link to the documentation for, making it easy for myself (and possibly others) to use my config reasonably efficiently for reference.

If you’re starting out with emacs, advice: if you’re gonna copy paste others’ configs (and you should), don’t do it all at once. Incrementalism and consistent documentation is good. Cruft you forget about don’t ever use isn’t necessarily bad (unless you inflict it on others), but it’s not your best life.

Also, if you’re starting out, some packages I particularly recommend learning to use (search em or steal em from me):

• ivy-mode, with ivy-rich and counsel, for better navigation/information inside emacs
• use-package in place of ‘require for installing packages
• which-key will show you your keybinds
• sensible-defaults does what it says on the box
• when you’re ready, org-mode, with all its extensions is a reason onto itself to use emacs.

A last bit of advice, emacs can eat up stupid amounts your time if you let it. Skills that are incidentally useful when emacs-ing:

• Learn how to selectively steal bits of others’ configurations that you need for a quick fix
• Learn to use customize/customize-group to lazily modify variables without resorting to the documentation
• Learn how to selectively find the information you need from the documentation on a need-to-know basis. Ex: emacs-manual, org-manual, elisp, ivy, are all fat packages.
• Learn when it’s time to just read the documentation and become a super user.
• Lisp is an easy language to pick up, but it’s also fairly unnecessary to know for the most part when using Emacs. Don’t rush into it.