Everyone can contribute to the documentation to make it better. Consider doing so.

Remember, no one gets paid to maintain or document Emacs, so the quality of the documentation is really pretty remarkable for how good it is.

It can always be made better, though.

I have to say that I was a vim user for over 20 years - but this past January I moved to eMacs - simply because of Orgmode .

I have found better documentation and practicality in eMacs than I ever have in vim.

Also - I configured eMacs slowly - by hand - with no vim modes. I wanted to jump in feet first into the world of eMacs.

Your assessment of how difficult eMacs and elisp are to learn - has not been the case for me. But maybe I’m being more patient with the experience and enjoying the journey.

Agree with your sentiment about documentation. Some people have made great efforts to document, but since eMacs is so big you can’t document it all. The people that know about the things think some stuff is obvious.

The good thing is, it’s 2023 and we have AI. Ask chatgpt to write the code for you. It basically has access to every resource available and can help you if you’re stuck. I use it to write eMacs config stuff all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/@SystemCrafters/playlists

You are welcome.

If I understand correctly, you are asking why is documentation using bad code examples that are not explanatory and/or usable?

If so, then I believe we can exonerate the emacs community from this issue as this is an industry-wide problem. I recall trying to figure out what a .NET class do from the generic unusable examples given in MS code, and more recently trying to divine meaning from the almost usable but never truly so code examples in Angular documentation. And you’ll see that everywhere. I got used to ignore documentation and just read the code. Tests sometimes help as they are actual programs that use the stuff in question, but it does seem like writing good, usable documentation is an art form no one bothered to master. Or even apprentice in.

There’s a reason to that, code examples are written by people who are experts in the technology they are documenting. They have no way of knowing what is needed for someone new to understand in order to use it, so they default on writing the most basic code example they can come up with. It’s a known issue and you eventually learn to live with it.

Also, don’t bother complaining. You are getting this great tool (either emacs or Org-Mode) free and due to the great effort of its writers and maintainers (and I am always amazed at the scope of things that were created this way, it’s truly something to be proud of), so be thankful that it actually has documentation and besides, if you don’t like something, fix it and send them the patch, don’t complain! I mean, you won’t get to write that patch because you can’t understand the program due to its documentation, but hey, who said life is fair.

Learn enough to figure out how to use “Use Package” and figure out what packages you like, and what you truly hate about Emacs so you can customize the fuck out of it and BTFO the shitty defaults.

Store your config in GitHub and use GNU Stow to deploy it on each of your machines.

Past that, the only truly fucking “hard” thing is LSP for Emacs for use within modern web dev settings.

The minute that someone makes a config that is as easy as an IDE for React and Typescript projects, then I am convinced Emacs is easy to use so I will agree with your frustration that it is pretty crazy that it has not kept up with other IDEs in this respect.

Otherwise, it’s pretty good for Org mode and terminal. That is about all I use my actual old config for.

Spacemacs has gotten me closer to what I want though, but I just wish it was 100x easier with zero effort to get shit working like an IDE.

Maybe Doom is better though. Haven’t touched that in ages either.

I found Babel/Org/Emacs wonderful, but what a pain in the ass to learn it !

These are four different things (along with Elisp), are you trying to learn them all together? This is a recipe for frustration and burnout. You can learn Emacs bottom up (starting with Elisp) or top down (Starting with Org, then Emacs). Pick an approach and stick to it.

The documentation is austere

This makes no sense – Emacs’ documentation is among the best for projects of its kind. The Emacs manual, Elisp manual, EINTR manual and Org manual have answered almost every question I’ve had, with very few exceptions.

So few examples are given.

The entirety of Emacs’ source is open to you, and that’s without including every package you have installed. Every usage of a macro or function is an example. xref-find-references is your friend.

There is too little blogs or books about Emacs, specifically about org and babel.

This may require a change in mindset. The reason I need books or blog posts to learn (say) Zig or Nix is because the manuals are out of date or publicly available source is unreadably dense. For the above given reasons, this is not true of Emacs.

The only time I’ve needed blog posts to learn about Emacs is for discovery – bringing attention to the existence of a feature is something Emacs does struggle with, despite the introduction of new commands like shortdoc. Even then, I prefer to just look up the source or the manual to learn about a feature once I know it exists.

It’s a game changer for a lot of my code, and would deserve a whole page to illustrate it. But no, it’s given in a «niche» example.

*this* is only useful for post-processing babel blocks (as I understand it), and it is mentioned in the section on post-processing babel blocks. It is explained with examples too. I don’t see where else it should go.

For such an old and wise piece of software, I can’t understand why we don’t have a smooth learning experience with Emacs.

Your idea of a smooth learning curve comes baked in with assumptions I don’t share. The manuals can teach you everything you need to know to beat Emacs into the shape you want. I’ve had a much smoother time learning Emacs than I’ve had learning any other complex piece of software, like Bash, Systemd, Blender or (heaven forbid) Nix.

I can recommend the following resources:

• Mastering Emacs - book transformed how I use and work with Emacs
• YouTube videos about emacs - shows how others do it, and you can then decide if you want the same functionality in your own editor.

Do you use org-edit-special in Org Mode (bound to C-c ' by default) to edit code blocks? It opens the code block in special temporary buffer with proper major mode enabled so you can edit the source code block with all the batteries included.

I often thought that emacs should have a live repl game tutorial

like clojure koans but as an exploration of basic emacs abilities, then regular editing abilities, then fancier, then edebug and defmacro

But I struggle to achieve my learning of Elisp.

I think it is on your side. Sorry to tell it open, but Lisp(s) are very easy to learn and pick up. I don’t know what you are teaching and what your expertize is in, but for me Lisp was as easy as VisualBasic.

The documentation is austere.

Emacs and Emacs Lisp are by fart the most documented Lisp applications. I can agree that it might be a bit outdated in terminology, and both terminology and API need some acclimatization since they predate the terminology we use today, and Lisp is a bit different from your ordinary Python/C/Java-like language. But I wouldn’t say it is very hard; just different.

I found TODAY by CHANCE in this page

It has been in your Emacs all along, for a long time, since it is a part of Org manual that comes with your Emacs. You have to be more curious about what you are doing if you want to learn it and understand it. Nobody is going to throw knowledge at you; that happens only in classes. As a teacher, you should know that better than anyone else. If you want to learn and develop as Elisp programmer you will have to dig in yourself, be curious, search, read manual. Emacs Lisp is one of the most discoverable and documented Lisps and probably programming languages at all. You can C-h f to see docs directly in Emacs, and than just ‘s’ in help window to see the source code. There are manuals for many parts of Emacs, including Org, that are built into your Emacs; you have debugging tools and lots of code to look at. You can also use Helpful which shows you the source code per default.

we don’t have a smooth learning experience with Emacs

A learning experience is very subjective. It depends on many things. One of them is a person’s ability as well as the will to learn.

Am I the only one to experience this ?

Probably not the only one, but also probably not the most representative example either. I am sorry. I am not trying to put you down as a person, but just suggesting that you should be more active, curious and looking for help yourself. As said, people can only provide you with manuals and material, but you have to look it up yourself, unless you can find an Emacs course. There are some online, perhaps that suits you better? Might be worth your time and small money investment. Perhaps look at some videos, or simply search for Elisp tutorials. There are some around.

It sounds like a good side project reach out to me to outline goals and objectives.

If you have the right mindset learning Emacs can be way more enjoyable than learning any other tool.

It’s just that the mindset required is the old school pre-Internet programmer mindset. You need to make a habbit of internalizing the documentation. When you’re doing something, look into the appropriate section of the manual, to see if you really know all the manual has to say regarding the subject. You also need to track which portions of the manuals you’ve learned and which you haven’t. Also, yes, learn to efficiently use info. It takes an hour, but would serve you well for years.

After you’ve established those habbits, you’d understand the superiority of the Emacs way, because you’d be learning topics in a systematic manner, instead of just learning a hodgepodge of random hacks from Stack Overflow, reddit and other sources.

https://www.youtube.com/@SystemCrafters/playlists

You are welcome.

regarding Elisp:
Consider using and contributing to the packages helpful and/or elisp-demos.