Bad Emacs Advice - Mastering Emacs

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2022-01-20 13:00:06

I have been using Emacs since 2004 which, measured in Emacs-ontological terms, barely counts as much experience at all. But since I started using Emacs I have spent a large part of that time learning, just like everyone else, and helping others do the same — and perhaps more to the point: watching other people dispense advice on how to learn Emacs or get started with it.

We’ve all spent a large amount of time learning, and reaching proficiency in, Emacs. So, the sage advice that most people dispense to new Emacs users is usually just that: sage advice. But just like pizza with pineapple, people do occasionally give out downright bad advice.

A lot of the bad advice – and it’s really just a few things that crop up again and again – that I see repeated all over the place seems to stem from the idea that Emacs’s own builtin facilities are immovable barriers, or cumbersome impediments, to achieving True Enlightenment, and that you can only achieve this Zen of Emacs through self-flagellation.

So I’m quickly going to go over the things that I really wish people wouldn’t tell new users, even though they do so with an abundance of good faith.