It takes a few weeks to learn the basics in Emacs. But when you have learned it, you will be able to write really nice code really fast!

To be able to program really fast you want as little overheads in your code creating as possible. An overhead is the continuous moving with your right hand from the keyboard to the mouse. In Emacs, you never use your mouse! When you are working with websites you often clock and test via your browser. Get away from this behavior by using C-M-u to refresh Firefox. Use code like:

AddCustomJs(
' $(document).ready(function(){
$(".shootme").click();
})');

to be able to click the button you are working with. Work in TestSuite to create a regular expression or web service. TestSuite::Run() is run by C-M-t. During programming, you can run C-M-w to do a compilation test and M-n to jump to the compiling error.

Start with switching to an English keyboard layout and learn where all the buttons are. English keyboard has a layout that is made to easily write program code. Then you just start programming and try to learn the most common commands: Open file(C-x C-f). Switch buffer (C-x b), change window (C-,), Save (C-x C-s), Undo (C-/), Break (C-g) (use when you want to stop a command, it is good to know in the beginning when you often press the wrong buttons and weird things happen!) and stop using your mouse!

Continue to learn more and more Emacs commands: Mark (C-space) (Stop with C-g), Copy (M-w), Cut-out (C-w), Paste (C-y), Kill line (C-k), create comment to function (C-M-k), and more. After a few weeks, you can start removing overheads. Start with shutting down arrow keys and use C-n, C-p, C-b, and C-f instead. Change so that Caps-lock becomes CTRL, your pinkies will like it! Move [Enter] to C-j. Move [Backspace] to C-h and so on.

Now the world of Emacs will open up! Create your own macros to do the most common operations. Practice writing correctly (right finger on the right key). It is always possible to become a little bit faster!