An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp

What Hacker News says

1. mktemp-dJul 2026
   Piggy backing to apply more recommendations too.

   An Introduction to Programming in EMacs Lisp is also good for the first few chapters even if you don’t use emacs because you are given fundamental concepts of lisp that can be applied to the understanding of other dialects. It’s also free.

   Learn you a Haskell (despite Haskell being not a flavor of list, they share similar DNA ) is great at understanding functional programming with lisp like languages.

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2. spit2windNov 2025
   Open Emacs and press <return> to read the tutorial. This gives you the basics to be productive.

   Understandably, some people complain that it shouldn't need a tutorial or the defaults are bad. There's validity to that angle. There's also validity to Emacs pre-dating GUIs, the IBM keyboard, and the x86 instruction set. Once you get past the history of windows and killing, you can explore. The history is also super interesting!

   https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs?EmacsHistory

   https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3386324

   After you've read the tutorial, go wild. Try stuff out. Break things. Fix them. Learn your limits. Learn that there are very few limits imposed by Emacs itself.

   Hands down, the best resource for Emacs is Emacs itself. Especially, the Emacs manual and the Elisp manual. The "An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" is also excellent if you're not familiar with Lisp. Learn to read Info files and learn the help system (basically C-h f and C-h v)

   https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/

   Emacs really is a flagship of Freedom, with all its pain and glory. It lets you exist at the threshold of your zone of proximal development. Every bit you put into Emacs, you get a return on investment.

   Welcome to the Emacs community! It's full of weirdos and wizards, as well as regular folk. Stick around and I'm sure you'll make friends in no time.

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3. spit2windMay 2024
   I second Emacs Lisp. Call `emacs -Q` (to open it without an init) and press enter. Emacs should have started with the default splash screen open and the cursor over the link to the tutorial. Read the tutorial and understand the basics of Emacs.

   Next, read An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp. It's a lovely book and fun to read: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/eintr/in...

   Learn to read and work with Lisp by reading the Emacs source code and playing with it.

   Check out the Evolution of Emacs Lisp. It's a neat little Lisp! https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386324

   Emacs has the best documentation and documentation system ever made. Learn C-h f, C-h v, and friends, as well as the info system and the power of indexes.

   I hope you find joy and wonder exploring Emacs and Emacs Lisp like so many others have for nearly 40 years!

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4. beepbooptheoryJan 2022
   Just to add: the built-in "Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" is also really really great. I have been using emacs for a while, with one framework or another, but always hesitated actually learning lisp. I was too focused on learning the kinds of languages and systems that might get me a job, and it felt like too big of a venture in learning a whole language just for my development environment. Now, I have a given up on the employable thing, and have been enlightened by SICP and lispey languages, and in general, the simple beauty of Emacs itself, not just what I can make it do. It takes only a little time to get comfortable with the nested (), and weird vocabulary, and it just really will click with you at some point, how simple it all really is, how every function bears on the simple syntactic principles of the language as whole, its lists all the way down!

   You can see the language work, by looking at the code.

   It may not get me a fancy computer job, but I think I am happier on the whole anyway, giving myself to lisp. Something therapeutic about it.

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5. User23Dec 2021
   The official documentation[1] is quite good. An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp[2] is just what it sounds like. It will get you familiar with writing Elisp, using the debugger, and some other basics. At that point, you should be able to navigate the Elisp Reference Manual without too much trouble.

   Once you have that foundation, you shouldn't have much trouble scratching whatever itches that arise. The community is thriving so often a web search will return a blog or video explaining how to do exactly what you want. And once you're familiar with it, Elisp is a fairly readable language, so you can learn a lot from looking at the source for other packages to get ideas.

   Edit: Sibling comment for Advent of Code is also a solid idea. Arguably Emacs's greatest strength is that it's a fantastic Elisp development environment.

   [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/

   [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

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6. donioNov 2021
   Back in the day I started out with the "Emacs Lisp Intro" also known as "An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" that comes with Emacs. I remember printing it out and devouring it before going to sleep.

   It looks like it's been kept up to date and you could do worse than starting there, especially in an Emacs context.

   Here is the online version in case you don't know how to navigate info manuals yet:

   https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

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