Q: What the heck is going on? This text editor is crazy!

A: Yes, it is a bit crazy and we like it that way! Emacs likes to do things its own way and uses its own key combinations that are very different than other editors you might be familiar with...

But don't worry! If you use it long enough your brain will become warped in just the right way that you'll insist that Emacs works perfectly and it is the other editors that are all screwy... You'll want to read an Emacs tutorial first if you are not yet at home with the Emacs environment. Later, you'll want to peruse the complete Emacs manual.

Q: What's the difference between Emacs Lisp and other Lisps?

A: Lisp is a family of languages that includes includes many dialects. The most common dialect is called ANSI Common Lisp. The code you'll see in this tutorial, written in Emacs Lisp, is almost exactly identical to the Common Lisp version of this tutorial. There are some significant ways that these two dialects differ, but they don't matter much for this tutorial.

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