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Emacs From Scratch #1 - Getting Started with a Basic Usable Configuration

System Crafters · 299.5K views · 2020-09-12 · 58:30

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Overview

The first stream in the Emacs From Scratch series, building a custom Emacs configuration from zero while teaching basics. It covers a usable baseline setup and the packages for completion, themes and productivity.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a thoughtful, step-by-step way to build your own Emacs config rather than starting from Doom or Spacemacs.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2021–2024

Topics

Testing, debugging & developer toolsFunctional programming
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emacsinit fileivyuse-packagesystem crafters

What people said

tagfowufe · 2023-09 · Strong recommendation

It's incredibly useful to me. I love it. I find it nicely curated and true to the word 'starter' (kit). If I knew more about Emacs, this is definitely what I would have created, and in a similar manner. It's that lil' layer of configuration that's missing that makes the first clash with emacs sane. I like the structure. I also like the fact that there's a 'researcher' mixin. Would absolutely love to see your opinionated inclusion of org-roam, and general.el. I recently dabbled into System Crafters' 'Emacs from Sratch' series [0], which is incredibly well thought-out. After 5 hours of following it, you kinda get feature parity between his config and this; but in Berock's case it's done more natively which is really, really neat. I only miss some basic config with general.el. I feel super lucky to have started in Emacs when they finally added LSP and Treesitter support, and with System Crafters' help and yours! [0] [VIDEO]

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ParetoOptimal · 2024-04 · Recommendation

Go through emacs from scratch: [VIDEO] Try using that config 25% of your work/productive time for 1 month. Then if you are annoyed by how much time it takes try using doomemacs for the same 25% time. At the end of this you'll know if/which emacs approach is for you.

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BeetleB · 2021-11 · Recommendation

The Emacs From Scratch series on Youtube is actually quite good. He does have all his config in a Github repository if you need to copy/paste. This is the first video: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by System Crafters, played through YouTube.

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