Top all-time · #372
Mastering Emacs
Personal blog · masteringemacs.org · on HN as mickeypprogramming
Mastering Emacs is a personal blog at masteringemacs.org about programming. Since 2010, 144 different Hacker News readers have linked it 225 times, most often “Mastering Emacs”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 17 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mastering Emacs as the place to learn Emacs, citing its reading guide, articles on Emacs releases and tools, and Mickey Petersen's book.
- Recommended for · 17 comments
- Called excellent, fantastic and very helpful, especially the Mastering Emacs book; others call its roundups and reading guide good.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Mastering Emacs25 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2015-05-23
- Mastering emacs: a blog about mastering the world's best text editor7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-11-26
- Keyboard Shortcuts every Command Line Hacker should know about GNU Readline6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-10-27
- New edition of Mastering Emacs6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-09-27
- Mastering Emacs: What's new in Emacs 29.15 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-07-30
- How to Write a Book in Emacs (2015)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-06-14
- Speed up Emacs with libjansson and native elisp compilation5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-16
- Emacs: Mastering Eshell5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-10-24
- Combobulate: Structured Movement and Editing with Tree-Sitter5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-01-31
- Complete guide to mastering eshell, the emacs lisp shell5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-12-14
What Hacker News says?
Thanks for everything you do for the Emacs community, mickeyp. I've learned so much from https://www.masteringemacs.org/
Comment linking /
on “TTE: Terminal Text Effects”Submitted What’s new in Emacs 28.1? as a story · 378 points
HN discussionWas reading about emacs and tree-sitter today [1]. Tree-sitter is a force to be reckoned with. [1] https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/how-to-get-started-tr...
Comment linking /article/how-to-get-started-tree-sitter
on “Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax”Submitted What's new in Emacs 31.1 as a story · 346 points
HN discussionMaybe this: https://www.masteringemacs.org/
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on “Show HN: I built an online interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster”Submitted Tree Sitter and the Complications of Parsing Languages as a story · 225 points
HN discussionAs I recall GNU Emacs does this too, by default. https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/improving-performance...
Comment linking /article/improving-performance-emacs-display-engine
on “Why modern software is slow”Submitted Mastering Emacs as a story · 225 points
HN discussion`vterm` beats the crap out of `eshell` as a functional terminal, unless you've put a lot of effort into customizing it. https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/running-shells-in-ema...
Comment linking /article/running-shells-in-emacs-overview
on “I just wanted Emacs to look nice – Using 24-bit color in terminals”Submitted Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander as a story · 178 points
HN discussionIndeed, I meant the emacs shell. https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/complete-guide-master... has a good overview in the section regarding the Plan 9 Smart Shell. I ultimately just didn't find I used it much. If i am iterating, org-mode with shell sources fits a bit more natural for me. Edit: and to be clear, I meant specifically to have the output below the command with the command still in edit mode. Was not tr…
Comment linking /article/complete-guide-mastering-eshell
on “Show HN: Ultimate Plumber – a tool for writing Linux pipes with live preview”Submitted Emacs’s Builtin Elisp Cheat Sheet as a story · 169 points
HN discussionI have the same language issue. Emacs has a native version of this feature[0] that works great in Doom. TeX mode, where you enter a backslash before the accent (c \ , => ç) is most like C-k in that it requires an explicit keypress. I usually just use one of the language-specific modes because you can then fluidly type diacritics (with modes for prefix or postfix entry) and manually rewrite c, or e’ on the rare occas…
Comment linking /article/diacritics-in-emacs
on “Emacs is special regarding UIs”Submitted Bad Emacs Advice as a story · 165 points
HN discussionThe Mastering Emacs ebook. https://www.masteringemacs.org/
Comment linking /
on “Org-mode on web, built with React, for mobile, synced with Dropbox, Google Drive”Submitted Why Emacs has buffers as a story · 160 points
HN discussionThere's a new elisp JIT in emacs 28 https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/38/ There's a new portable undump in emacs 27 https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in-emacs-27... a couple of examples of very core features off the top of my head
Comment linking /article/whats-new-in-emacs-27-1
on “Closing 45% of the open Emacs bugs”Submitted What's New in Emacs 30.1? as a story · 158 points
HN discussionSadly, I am not aware of any. Perhaps some articles and the book in https://www.masteringemacs.org/ . At some point, I would like to write an introduction to Emacs, Org, Notmuch and friends. Their docs are great if you have been using Emacs for a long time. But if you are a newcomer, the learning curve is really steep. And it shouldn't be like that. At their core all these are conceptually simple, easy to understand…
Comment linking /
on “Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text”Submitted Emacs: Mastering Eshell as a story · 157 points
HN discussionCheck our this guide on using ReStructured text with emacs. Great tutorial here. https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/how-to-write-a-book-i...
Comment linking /article/how-to-write-a-book-in-emacs
on “How I wrote and published my novel using only open source tools”Submitted How to Write a Book in Emacs (2015) as a story · 145 points
HN discussion> I think those arguments are sensible if you have a PhD in emacs. To get that PhD just start reading „Mastering Emacs“ by Mickey Peterson: https://www.masteringemacs.org Many people try learning by doing Emacs and it’s not a bad approach. However, I believe learning the fundamental „theory of editing“ will help you quite a lot to grasp this tool’s inherent complexity much faster. And it’s a fun read, I think.
Comment linking /
on “Emacs-copilot: Large language model code completion for Emacs”Submitted What’s New In Emacs 24.4 as a story · 126 points
HN discussionI wrote about the importance of tree sitter a while back, for people who don't know why Emacs would adopt it: https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/tree-sitter-complicat...
Comment linking /article/tree-sitter-complications-of-parsing-languages
on “Eglot has landed on master: Emacs now has a built-in LSP client”Submitted What’s New In Emacs 24 as a story · 109 points
HN discussionA bash script + a little elisp magic that leverages Emacs for fuzzy finding on the command line instead of fzf: https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/fuzzy-finding-emacs-i...
Comment linking /article/fuzzy-finding-emacs-instead-of-fzf
on “Ask HN: Can I see your scripts?”Submitted What’s New in Emacs 24.4 as a story · 100 points
HN discussionMastering Emacs by Mickey Petersen is excellent: https://www.masteringemacs.org/
Comment linking /
on “A CEO's Guide to Emacs (2015)”Submitted Fuzzy Finding with Emacs Instead of Fzf as a story · 90 points
HN discussion
