Qqwy
How to learn Spacemacs as a vim/emacs newbie?
I have used Sublime Text for a long time now. (Before that, I used Notepad++ for an equally long time. When I was still using Windows.)
However, I have seen many people on this forum talk very enthusiastically about Spacemacs, and I really like the idea of being able to control all of my computer without touching my mouse. I love the idea of key bindings. These last three years, I have been depending on the terminal for more and more of my daily tasks.
Therefore, I decided that I wanted to learn how to use Spacemacs.
So, I installed it and tried to learn it. However:
- The emacs starting tutorial is hard to follow, as spacemacs has rebound nearly all of even the most basic commands.
- The evil-mode starting tutorial presumes that you have a background in vim, emacs or both.
- When I try to perform some emacs command, it turns out I am actually in some weird vim-mode and the keypresses do not do what I think they should be doing.
- None of my prior knowledge of keybindings (Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl+V to paste, Ctrl+Z to undo, Ctrl+Y to redo, Ctrl with arrow keys to move between words, Shift with arrow keys to select larger portions of text, etc) applies here.
So, in summary: Help!
I feel like this is a very powerful tool, but I have absolutely no idea how to get started.
What would be a good way to learn Spacemacs, as someone who knows their way around the terminal and Sublime Text, but has no clue about both Vim and Emacs?
Thank you 
~Wiebe-Marten/Qqwy
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Oxyrus
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
jbr95
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?
NobbZ
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.
peerreynders
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.
OvermindDL1
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
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