Emacs Redux
emacsredux.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2013
Bozhidar Batsov, creator of Emacs Prelude and CIDER, writes tips, release notes, and tutorials on Emacs.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it for learning GNU Emacs and its techniques, and link its Emacs 29.1 release writeup and WSL2 guide.
32HN people shared it
16linked it in comments
26stories submitted
618story points
3 months agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1A new blog dedicated to Emacs3 people · 240 points · first shared 2013 · 57 comments on HN
- 2A crazy productivity boost: Remap Return to Control3 people · 5 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 3State of Emacs Survey3 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 4Emacs 29.1 Released2 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 5Running Emacs with Systemd2 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 6A peek at emacs 24 dot 4 rectangular selection2 people · first shared 2014
- 7A peek at emacs 24 dot 4 prettify symbols mode2 people · first shared 2017
- 8Emacs Prelude 1.01 people · 199 points · first shared 2020 · 60 comments on HN
- 9A Peek at Emacs 24.4: Auto-indentation by Default1 people · 82 points · first shared 2014 · 34 comments on HN
- 10Instant access to your shell init files1 people · 35 points · first shared 2020 · 9 comments on HN
- 11Forever Emacs1 people · 15 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12Emacs: Goodbye Setq, Hello Setopt1 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 13Stealing from the Best Emacs Configs1 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Replacing Dash.el with Built-In Emacs APIs1 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 15Travel Back and Forward in Git History1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
JNRowe · 2023-09-08
A much less thorough round-up of 29.1 was discussed here a little while ago¹, with many of great comments².
¹ https://emacsredux.com/blog/2023/07/30/emacs-29-1-released/
² https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36929514
aeonik · 2023-06-23
I love these symbols because once you learn them you can instantly spot where all your loops are, it really make things compact, and reveals the structure of your code far more efficiently.
A solution to the problem if incomprehensibility is to use a plugin to replace the words. I use emacs prettify symbols:
https://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/08/25/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-pretti…
babarock · 2013-09-03
And you shouldn't miss Bozhidar's blog on Emacs (http://emacsredux.com/) where he explains a lot of the very cool techniques he included in Prelude.
brudgers · 2013-04-24
I have found EmacsRedux informative for learning GNUemacs. The key for me was understanding that Emacs is command driven and that shortcuts are merely shortcuts to commands - i.e. M-x <command> invokes the <command> of which emacs has hundreds (+ lisp expressions). Unlike shortcuts, commands can be accessed with auto-complete.
http://emacsredux.com/
_emacsomancer_ · 2023-03-03
No personal experience with it (on Windows), but maybe running via WSL(2)? (E.g., https://emacsredux.com/blog/2021/12/19/using-emacs-on-windows-11-with-… )
geospeck · 2022-11-29
I am not quite sure how this particular feature will look but Emacs can be already used as a SQL client. Here is a short demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D97vDu_BhwA
Here is an introduction blog[1] and the related mode[2]
[1] https://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/06/13/using-emacs-as-a-database-clien…
[2] https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/lisp/progmodes/sql.e…
d0mine · 2022-11-26
It is possible to use Emacs effectively with just M-, C- keybindings (20+ years experience). Super (windows key) is for desktop manipulation, so no loss on iPad. No idea what is hyper--you likely need to have 40+ years of experience to start with the space cadet keyboard https://emacsredux.com/blog/2022/06/01/the-space-cadet-keyboard/
julian37 · 2022-05-16
Came here to say this. I'm starting Emacs only after a reboot, who cares if it takes 3s or 30s to launch (mine around 5 or so.)
Use emacsclient if you want to use it as $EDITOR.
https://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/12/23/uptime/
bzg · 2020-10-22
With some comments by Bozhidar Batsov (https://github.com/bbatsov) here: https://emacsredux.com/blog/2020/10/22/state-of-emacs-survey/
fidelramos · 2020-07-21
Emacs in systemd: https://emacsredux.com/blog/2020/07/16/running-emacs-with-systemd/
wtetzner · 2018-12-11
No, real programmers use emacs: https://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/04/03/easter-eggs/#butterfly-mode
edejong · 2017-01-23
In some of my programming environments, such as Emacs, I choose to prettify keywords to unicode characters such as 'function' (λ), 'lambda' (λ), 'forall' (∀) and others. It takes a bit getting used to, but it brings the focus where it needs to be: the code and data flow. The brain quickly adopts new pattern-matchable structures, so why bother with long keywords?
[1] http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/08/25/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-prettif…
namarkiv · 2014-10-21
The rectangle highlighting issue has been fixed[0].
http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-rectang…
stronglikedan · 2014-10-20
An older link, but:
http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-rectang…
_delirium · 2014-10-15
This blog has had a series of posts on some of the new features that I found useful: http://emacsredux.com/blog/categories/emacs24-dot-4/
PuercoPop · 2013-09-10
Protip, you can make emacs use mdfind with (setq locate-command "mdfind")[1]
[1]: http://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/07/05/locate/
(setq locate-command "mdfind")