The Emacs Experience

Official Documentation

To change the value of a variable in emacs-lisp:

(setq variable value)

Where variable is the name of the variable and value is the value you'd like to give the variable.

Official Documentation

Keys can be bound to commands either interactively or in your emacs configuration.

Global bindings can be set with global-set-key.
For example:

(global-set-key [f1] 'help-for-help)

This will bind the function help-for-help to the f1 key.

which-key is a package that displays available keybindings in popup.

Emacs Documentation - Elisp Documentation

Hooks can be used to execute code on certain occasions

For example:

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'auto-fill-mode)

This calls auto-fill-mode when text-mode is active.

Official Documentation

Customize provides a more intuitive and interactive method to customize parts of Emacs.
To try it, type M-x customize.

https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

The use-package macro allows you to isolate package configuration in your emacs config in a way that is both performance-oriented and tidy.

This is how I set up use-package in my config:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))

(unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
  (package-install 'use-package))

Now, we can install a package from MELPA like so:

(use-package evil)

use-package also provides a way to lazy-load packages. Read more about this in the User Manual.

Major modes provide specialized facilities for working on a particular file type, such as a C source file, or a particular type of non-file buffer, such as a shell buffer. Major modes are mutually exclusive; each buffer has one and only one major mode at any time.

Minor modes are optional features which you can turn on or off, not necessarily specific to a type of file or buffer. For example, Auto Fill mode is a minor mode in which SPC breaks lines between words as you type. Minor modes are independent of one another, and of the selected major mode.

Official Documentation - Dired Reference Card

Dired is the emacs way to interact with your files. The name “Dired” stands for “directory editor”.
All the operations you expect from a typical file-manager application are available in Dired, plus some that are specific to Emacs.

all-the-icons-dired adds dired support to all-the-icons.

(use-package all-the-icons)
(use-package all-the-icons-dired :hook (dired-mode-hook . all-the-icons-dired-mode))

Ibuffer is for buffers, what dired is for files. It provides a way of filtering and then grouping the list of buffers that you currently have open, and greatly improves Emacs’ usability.

You can define filter groups, and apply them, as such:

(setq ibuffer-saved-filter-groups
      '(("main"
         ("modified" (and
                      (modified . t)
                      (visiting-file . t)))
         ("blog" (filename . "/projects/site/"))
         ("code" (or (filename . "/projects/")
                     (filename . "/code/")))
         ("org" (mode . org-mode))
         ("dired" (mode . dired-mode))
         ("help" (or (name . "\*Help\*")
                     (name . "\*Apropos\*")
                     (name . "\*info\*")
                     (mode . help-mode)))
         ("internal" (name . "^\*.*$"))
         ("other" (name . "^.*$")))))

  (add-hook 'ibuffer-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
              (ibuffer-switch-to-saved-filter-groups "main")))

Additionally, ibuffer-auto-mode is a minor mode that automatically updates the buffer list.

(add-hook 'ibuffer-mode-hook
          '(lambda ()
             (ibuffer-auto-mode 1)
             (ibuffer-switch-to-saved-filter-groups "main")))

You'll probably also want to hide empty filter groups:

(setq ibuffer-show-empty-filter-groups nil)

all-the-icons-ibuffer is a package to display icons for all buffers in ibuffer.

(use-package all-the-icons-ibuffer
  :ensure t
  :init (all-the-icons-ibuffer-mode 1))

https://company-mode.github.io/

Company is a text completion framework for Emacs. The name stands for "complete anything".
It uses pluggable back-ends and front-ends to retrieve and display completion candidates.

Additional plugins:

• company-box is a company frontend with icons.
  
• company-statistics is a minor mode that keeps a log of completions chosen, and uses that to rank candidates the next time you choose.
  
• company-quickhelp adds documentation popups when idling over a completion candidate.
  

Alternatively, corfu is a very minimal Emacs plugin that just works. By default, it's quite plain, but there's a sister plugin called cape that adds more functionality.

https://github.com/minad/vertico

Vertico provides a performant and minimalistic vertical completion UI based on the default completion system.

orderless provides a completion style that divides the pattern into space-separated components, and matches candidates that match all of the components in any order

hotfuzz, on the other hand, is a fuzzy Emacs completion style similar to the built-in flex style, but with a better scoring algorithm. Specifically, it is non-greedy and ranks completions that match at word; path component; or camelCase boundaries higher.
I personally prefer using hotfuzz.

org-hide-emphasis-markers automatically hides any inline emphasis markers which leads to a much cleaner look.
org-hide-leading-stars hides the leading stars in org headlines.
org-link-descriptive turns the markup of an org-mode link to show just the description

(setq org-hide-leading-stars t
      org-hide-emphasis-markers t
      org-link-descriptive t)

org-bullets shows org-mode bullets as UTF8 characters.
You can set the bullets that it uses like so:

(setq org-bullets-bullet-list '("◉" "○" "●" "○" "●" "○" "●"))

org-superstar is a descendant of org-bullets with some extra enhancements.

https://github.com/jrblevin/deft

Deft is an Emacs mode for quickly browsing, filtering, and editing directories of plain text notes, inspired by Notational Velocity. It was designed for increased productivity when writing and taking notes by making it fast and simple to find the right file at the right time and by automating many of the usual tasks such as creating new files and saving files.

Official Documentation

A face is a collection of graphical attributes for displaying text: font, foreground color, background color, optional underlining, etc.
Faces control how Emacs displays text in buffers, as well as other parts of the frame such as the mode line.