Congratulations on starting your Emacs journey! If you’ve reached this point, you have already gained valuable skills.

You have learned to experiment, to take risks in the scratch buffer, and to read the interpreter's error messages with a pinch of salt.

Defining functions is empowering. It encourages us to mold Emacs to suit our individual habits. We’re limited only by our creativity and willingness to experiment.

Other editors do this, but none are as free or encouraging as Emacs. We’re given a *scratch* to play with from the start, and can extend our editor with a few lines of text.

Emacs begins as a general purpose text editor, more raw and rudimentary its counterparts. It’s made useful by the steps we take with it.

Key concepts

Before moving on, take a moment to jot down all the things you’ve learned.