One of the things the Emacs editor is very good at is acting as a front end for other development tools (we discussed this from a philosophical angle in Chapter13). In fact, nearly every tool we've discussed in this chapter can be driven from within an Emacs editor session through front ends that give them greater utility than they would have running standalone.

To illustrate this, we'll walk you through the use of these tools with Emacs in a typical build/test/debug cycle. For details on them, see Emacs's own on-line help system; this section just gives you an overview, to motivate you to learn more.

Read and learn — not just about Emacs, but about the mental habit of looking for synergies between programs, and creating them. Try to read this section as instruction in philosophy, not just technique.