April 2022
People say you should leave Emacs's defaults unchanged.
Emacs is unbelievably customizable. Nearly any key can be changed. But there's advice given to rely on the defaults; they have been honed over years and years to be the best for everyone. I disagree.
What's best for everyone might not be best for you.
For example, C-z minimizes the Emacs frame. But I've never used it on purpose. I'd hit it by accident, surprising me when Emacs disappeared.
For nearly a decade, I hoped to get used to it. After all, haven't the default keybindings been carefully planned out? Aren't they perfect? I say no.
Your perfect configuration might be very different from someone else's.
Your needs are not the average user's needs, and your solutions should be different too. So change your Emacs to work with you.
You can override existing keybindings with improved functions:
- M-c on my Emacs goes to
#'capitalize-dwim, because that's better than#'capitalize-word. - I've replaced C-M-f, C-M-k, and other s-expression navigation functions with smartparens' versions.
But we can go further than replacing functions with better-behaved versions. Here are some other ways you might want to change Emacs's default behavior:
- Disable the toolbar and menubar. Take the screen space back.
- Hide the startup screen. Make your Emacs boot right to
*scratch*. - Don't use the custom file. Configure everything with Emacs Lisp.
If you treat Emacs as unchangeable, you're missing out on the best parts.
After all, Emacs was made to let you change it.