November 1, 2025
Duel of the text editors
Ask HN: Where to Begin with "Modern" Emacs?
Team Doom vs Team Vanilla: Emacs newbies caught in the crossfire
TLDR: An Ask HN on “modern” Emacs split the room: start simple with vanilla and learn, or install Doom and move fast. Veterans swapped platform tips and speed boasts, but the core fight is tinkering vs getting work done—crucial for newcomers picking a setup they’ll live in.
Ask HN tossed a simple question—how to start with “modern” Emacs—and the comments lit up like a keyboard at 2 a.m. The original post begged folks to skip heavy “distributions” and treat Emacs like it really is: a programmable tool you shape with Lisp (a coding language), not a plugin soup. Cue the split: Team Vanilla preaching “start simple, learn the basics, read the GNU manual,” versus Team Doom preaching “just install a starter kit and go.” One veteran even discovered new powers after watching System Crafters, but warned the tinkering rabbit hole can swallow your day. Productivity versus perfectionism—fight!
Then came the platform pragmatists: one user swore by macOS’s Emacs-plus build because it’s “hella fast,” while others said vanilla Emacs already ships with a ton of tools—just add essentials over time. Minimalists flexed with “I only need magit and yasnippet,” while a drive-by zinger dropped the meme-worthy bomb: “Just use Doom. Its good.” A middle-ground voice: Doom is a great reference but “heavy-handed” if you don’t want your keys and habits remixed. In short: start small, or start fast—either way, the real drama is whether you want to tinker forever or actually ship work, with the GNU manual playing surprise hero for the serious learners.
Key Points
- •The article recommends starting with vanilla Emacs using the minimal-emacs init.el and early-init.el.
- •It advises discovering packages via System Crafters and Reddit’s r/emacs community.
- •Emacs is emphasized as a programmable Lisp environment, not just a plugin-based editor.
- •Users are encouraged to read the GNU Emacs manual via the built-in Info reader or HTML.
- •Built-in introspection commands (describe-key, describe-function) and the helpful package are highlighted for learning and documentation.