If you want to use it in evil mode, there is a game to learn the key bindings http://vim-adventures.com

Practice, it’s super cool to use only your keyboard

Hi Qqwy! I’m in the same boat you were in when you posted in September 2016! I’m trying to decide how to get started with emacs/spacemacs, coming from Notepad++ and Sublime Text. My main motivation is based on being excited by what I’ve read of org-mode… can’t wait to try it!

It looks like by October that you were happy with Spacemacs. I’m going to to this way, too.

My question is: upon first installation, you are asked whether to use full vim/evil mode (default) or the emacs/evil hybrid mode. Which did you use? What would you recommend, two and a half years later?

If you have no background on vim, choose the emacs mode on first install, this way you have only to learn emacs bindings, and you can ignore all that edit/read-mode stuff, that in my opinion often confuses. As I do read your history in editors, you are used to type, not to mode-switching.

After you have choosen the emacs-flavored spacemacs, you can safely follow the emacs tutorials.

And you will get used to the context-switching between emacs and the outer world, when it comes to bindings. You will totally not realize the popping “save as…” window of your browser when you want to search something, you just hit cancel without even noticing. It will feel some day as if C-s ESC C-f is the native keybinding for searching on the current website

You will also get used to all the other key bindings and you will be able to switch back and forth depending on the active application.

It’s a bit rough but I went cold turkey to vanilla EMACS (VIM just didn’t gel with me).

Basically make a cheat sheet with your most common editing tasks (like on a note on your smart phone or the like) and google all the emacs equivalent steps (install all the modes you need by whatever means necessary - the “all-in-one packages” tend to be a bit overwhelming, so I’d go one at a time as you need them).

And then basically stay away from any other editor for a long while (while continually updating your cheat sheet and configuration). It’s a bit painful in the beginning but after a while the pace picks up a bit.

Don’t play down how useful VIM modes are, it simplifies a lot of work and a lot of commands. ^.^

/me is a heavy vim user