Suggestions for a setup for newbies

I have a friend who wants to get into programming, and I wanted to make a gentler Emacs for him to start using. Here's what I've made: [newbie.el](https://github.com/ashton314/newbie.el) Suggestions? This is primarily for my friend, so his needs trump all y'all's opinions ;-) but I wouldn't mind some good suggestions. Anything good that I'm missing? (Aside: "y'all's" is a neat pseudo-word because it has two apostrophes!) I recognize a lot of this is taste and semi-subjective, but if there's something that helped make the learning curve a little gentler, I'd be happy to hear it.

I find default setup for backup and autosave files is rather annoying as it pollutes current directory. So better either completely disable backups/autosaves or configure Emacs to move them to some discreet location.

Oh that’s excellent. I’ve had that enabled for so long that I’ve forgotten about it!

Some more that I find user friendly (savehist-mode) ; Save history for commands (setq isearch-resume-in-command-history 't) ; Use history for isearch as well (global-auto-revert-mode) ; Refresh files automatically when modified from outside emacs (setq make-backup-files nil) ; Do not use backup files (filename~) (setq create-lockfiles nil)) ; Do not use lock files (.#filename) (setq ring-bell-function 'ignore) ; Disable the bell for emacs (delete-selection-mode 1) ; If text is selected, we expect that typing will replace the selection (global-display-line-numbers-mode 't) ; Display line numbers on the left

I'd suggest leaving the menu bar visible. It can help a lot with discoverability.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsNewbie