When I stumbled upon this, I was blown away: there is a full-fledged book, currently an appropriate 287 pages, available in print with an ISBN number and everything, aimed at introducing non-programmers to computer programming with Emacs Lisp as their first programming language... and it is shipped as part of Emacs, kept up to date with the latest releases through the decades.
I'm amazed. What an achievement, and what a labor of love!
I don't know how to convey that the thing linked is a book, or that it concerns programming in general with Emacs Lisp as the language, or that it is aimed at non-programmers, without changing the title.
I wasn't really worried about it until the first commenter seemed to mistake the OP for a different kind of thing than it is. That's when I edited the title. :-\
If the FSF shop weren't closed at the moment, maybe I'd link to the shop page for the print version.
I don't know how to convey that the thing linked is a book, or that it concerns programming in general with Emacs Lisp as the language, or that it is aimed at non-programmers, without changing the title.
That's really easy, you put it in a comment and use the original title. You can't use titles for commentary on HN, it's in the site guidelines under 'In Submissions' https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's not just a manual! It's a whole book for learning to program for the first time. And it's been around for more than 30 years, continuously updated.
Is that not wild as hell? Does any other text editor in the world have such a thing?
I'm amazed. What an achievement, and what a labor of love!