Emacs

Start with vanilla emacs, watch and follow system cafter's "emacs from scratch series"

Be resourceful. Documentation, search engines, then support forums.

First off know that it will take time for everything to click and that is ok. One day you'll go from struggling and annoyance and at various stages you'll level up and what was once weird or annoying will become easy.

My biggest tips are:

1. As /u/Horrih recommended, start with vanilla nd use system crafters series. I found this invaluable as I wanted to know emacs inside and out, not just get it working.
2. Mastering Emacs book is a nice consolidation for a fair price. If you can spare some cash its well worth it. You can start with various blog articles to see if you like how the author presents things: https://www.masteringemacs.org/all-articles
3. Learn elisp via the built in info docs "Emacs Lisp Intro" you can find this via C-H i
4. Org mode is freaking awesome. Initially when I started with emacs for coding I was still using Notion and a few other organization/note apps. I'm fully Org and Org-Roam now and not only do I vastly prefer it, I now own all my data, and it is all in plaintext.
5. After you get a decent base setup going it can be very easy to fall into bike shedding and continually improving/working on your setup. To solve this keep a separate todo/project list (i do this via a dedicated org file for my config wants/needs/reminders) and block time to work on it rather than doing this continually. It's an easy trap to fall into.
6. Niche / Specific Bonus Tips that are huge for me
   1. If you're not going modal / evil mode (I do not) then figure out your solution to "ctrl" pinky. I found this odd as throughout life I never used my pinky. I press ctrl with the edge of my palm. Many do a rebinding to caps lock.
   2. If you're in a financially ok spot, or have some tendencies towards making things yourself. I highly recommend making or buying a mechanical keyboard with thumb clusters. While you could use the thumb for Ctrl binding (as mentioned above) I do this for a different reason - Additional modifier keys. See my next tip.
   3. Utilize Hyper and Super. If you're on windows super is a bit more annoying to work with but it is doable. On Linux its totally workable. I have Hyper and Super setup on my thumb clusters and use this to help me add 2 extra sets of bindings which keeps more of my keypresses as + and helps me organize my configuration model. This enables a lot of combos (see below). You don't really need a thumb cluster keyboard to do this i.e. you could map your apps key to hyper and your win key is the super key. BUT because I have the thumb cluster keys I can use my strongest digit to hit them. On top of that they are next to each other and alt in an L shape so pressing Super+Hyper+Alt or any combo of two is very easy.
      1. Hyper +
      2. Super +
      3. Ctrl + Hyper +
      4. Alt + Hyper +
      5. Ctrl + super +
      6. Alt + Super +
      7. etc

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I know I put a lot here but if any of it intrigues you just take a note of it for the future and start simple with an initial setup and learn a bit of elisp and you'll be off to the races!

Learn to Ask Emacs. Use the Help menu in the menu-bar - get to know it well. Learn the help commands on prefix key C-h, including C-h r, which takes you to the Emacs manual, and C-h S, which looks up a symbol (word) in that manual.

Learn how to create and use keyboard macros. Over time, learn some Elisp, which is the golden key to asking Emacs.

if you don't want to jump right into configuring things from scratch, I would recommend you start with Doom Emacs.

I started with Doom Emacs (which I've heard is great even if you're not an Evil user), but eventually found the abstractions frustrating and wanted to make Emacs truly my own, at which point I started over with a clean slate and now understand the configuration of my system a lot better.

I wish I'd started configuring it from scratch on my own sooner, for sure, but I don't know that you need to do so from the outset. If you just want to get work done while slowly getting used to the Emacs workflows, a configuration system like Doom's can make that easier. It can also welcome you into Emacs without scaring you away.

That said, the abstractions hide a lot of details of how Emacs works, so if you're sure you're in it for the long term and can take the time now—which is maybe what you mean by "studying Emacs"... it is a thing to study!—then by all means, start from scratch.

Either way, I'll echo u/nv-elisp above—when you're trying to configure something, look at the documentation and articles online before you ask questions! You'll learn how to learn, which will help you immensely with all future problems.

I'd also recommend a couple of packages to make things easier:

• The Helpful package makes the vital and helpful describe commands even more... helpful.
• The Vertico/Marginalia/Corfu/Embark/Orderless/Counsel set of packages greatly improve your ability to navigate around Emacs.

Good luck, and happy hacking!