Seems as if one wants to learn lisp, one has to learn emacs first. That said, I am looking for resources for the absolute beginner to learn emacs, looking for something along the lines of Common lisp A gentle introduction to symbolic computation., but for emacs. Something that assumes you know nothing, starts at the absolute beginningwith lots of exercise and answer to those exercise. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks
As has been covered ad nauseam in the other comments, it isn’t ~obligatory~ to learn GNU Emacs first. This really is true. mg, nano, (neo)vi(m), any terminal and some basic shell skills, any editor, they all work. SBCL works well in the terminal.
Learning GNU Emacs is fun and empowering though, and not as hard as people say. I ended up spending far more time on it than I’d planned, but it’s been a wonderful investment, I am a much happier computer-user, in many ways, and it showed me a new way to think about software, collaboration, freedom, etc.
It is hard, on the other hand, to accept that something that looks so naff when you first run it is so powerful and empowering under the hood!
Anyway, the choice is yours, and as long as you’re happy, and learning, it was the right choice. If you do choose GNU Emacs, here’s some excellent material to get going:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/pdf/eintr.pdf -- Bob Chassell’s introduction to Emacs Lisp. This is built in to your Emacs, you can get it from the Info pages, or download it as a PDF from the above link. It was my first programming book, and Bob takes it slow. This fits the criteria of your question the closest.
https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/beginners-guide-to-emacs -- Mickey Peterson is a legendary blogger on the subject of all things Emacs, and has a great book you could consider after trying a few articles. He gives tips and explanations of lots of different elements involved in understanding and getting good use out of Emacs.
https://invidious.flokinet.to/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7H6B7bBJ4ZO7BXjSZ -- if you’re into videos, there’s SystemCrafters Emacs From Scratch series ^^ as well as Mike Zamansky, Protesilaos Stavrou, and others. I particularly enjoy Prot’s videos, but SystemCrafters gets more hits.
Whatever you choose – happy Lisping :)