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chimprichtoday at 10:33 AM1 replyview on HN

I felt like that when I started using Emacs, about 25 years ago. It turned out to be worth it, though.

Emacs has its own tutorial (Help -> tutorial from the menus), which is a pretty good introduction. Learning to get help from Emacs itself is a bit of a learning curve, but really beneficial.

Learning to the use the help tools properly was something I didn't get around to for years, but I wish I had sooner.


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massysetttoday at 11:33 AM

Emacs says it is “self-documenting.”

Years ago it was remarkable for software to have docs built-in as Emacs does.

Then for many years it was standard for software to have help files, and it seemed anachronistic for Emacs to loudly proclaim it is self-documenting.

Now in the Web and LLM age, much software doesn’t even try to have built-in help or even much documentation, and it’s again remarkable that Emacs is self-documenting, especially the part of Emacs that users can program.

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