I had used IDE's, windows based text editors like UltraEdit, and vi/vim for the longest time before I decided it was time to go back to Emacs. I dedicated two weeks to using it almost exclusively to pick up the muscle memory of major keybindings. I haven't looked back since.
The keys I really needed out of the gate:
* F3/F4 - building macros, then C-x e to execute (after that, just plain e)
* C-s - search
* M-s o - occur (you define a regular expression, it lists all the lines that match it, so something like `def (` for python functions
C-v/M-v - page up/page down
* C-f/C-b - forward and back character
* M-f/M-b - forward and back word
* C-/ - undo
* M-w - copy
* C-y - paste
* C-o - open new line
* M-z - zap-to-character (try it, it's awesome)
* C-M-e / C-M-h - beginning/end of function
* C-a / C-e - beginning/end of line
* C-l - center window on cursor
* C-[space] - mark cursor / unmark cursor
* C-d/M-D - delete char/word
* C-k - kill line
* M-/ - autocomplete word (works in any file, any language, and cycles through suggestions on repeated calls)
...
Those and then getting yasnippet installed and working was probably the most important plugin. It's real simple templates for any language and there are a lot of decent default ones. (so for instance, you type html, then tab and it'll build a basic html file for you and put your cursor in the <head> tag, or def, then tab and you have a structured function definition and your cursor stops where the name goes, tab again it puts it in the parameters, tab again, docstring, tab again, coding area).
If you dedicate two weeks to it, you'll begin to see the power that everyone talks about. The first day or two will be frustrating because even the basics I just listed are a pain to remember out of the gate, let alone have the muscle memory to do without thinking.
This list seems really useful for general emacs, but does not help for spacemacs which has it's own equivalents (with vim-ey keybindings). I've been using spacemacs for a few years as my editor every day, and have not needed any of these.
The keys I really needed out of the gate:
* F3/F4 - building macros, then C-x e to execute (after that, just plain e)
* C-s - search
* M-s o - occur (you define a regular expression, it lists all the lines that match it, so something like `def (` for python functions
C-v/M-v - page up/page down
* C-f/C-b - forward and back character
* M-f/M-b - forward and back word
* C-/ - undo
* M-w - copy
* C-y - paste
* C-o - open new line
* M-z - zap-to-character (try it, it's awesome)
* C-M-e / C-M-h - beginning/end of function
* C-a / C-e - beginning/end of line
* C-l - center window on cursor
* C-[space] - mark cursor / unmark cursor
* C-d/M-D - delete char/word
* C-k - kill line
* M-/ - autocomplete word (works in any file, any language, and cycles through suggestions on repeated calls) ... Those and then getting yasnippet installed and working was probably the most important plugin. It's real simple templates for any language and there are a lot of decent default ones. (so for instance, you type html, then tab and it'll build a basic html file for you and put your cursor in the <head> tag, or def, then tab and you have a structured function definition and your cursor stops where the name goes, tab again it puts it in the parameters, tab again, docstring, tab again, coding area).
If you dedicate two weeks to it, you'll begin to see the power that everyone talks about. The first day or two will be frustrating because even the basics I just listed are a pain to remember out of the gate, let alone have the muscle memory to do without thinking.