pop-global-mark (C-x C-SPC) moves you around a global mark stack, and C-u set-mark-command (C-u C-SPC) does this locally in a buffer. (I use this hundreds of times a day.)
The bookmark package (go to "Bookmarks" in the Emacs info pages) give you persistent bookmarks, with a fairly nice interface.
I've written stuff in elisp only to find that it already existed in Emacs, too. Now, I usually check http://emacswiki.org first.
I had looked at global mark (pop-global-mark), local mark, and Bookmark but i didn't like their behaviors.
Global mark (or local mark) doesn't work on buffers that have been killed. When I jump back to a quick bookmark, I want its file loaded back into memory if its buffer has been killed.
Global mark doesn't work consistently. It seems to only remember the last mark set in a buffer, so it has an one mark per buffer behavior. The flow seems to use global mark to jump back to a buffer, then use local marks to jump to different points in the buffer. I want just one quick bookmark system, no global or local distinction, to remember multiple points in a buffer and multiple buffers.
Mark is kind of overloaded for different purposes. Its primary use is for marking regions (for copy/cut/etc). I turn on transient-mark-mode to better highlight regions. Whenever I made a mark for quick bookmarking, the region is highlighted and have to be canceled; it's very annoying.
The Bookmark package requires assigning a name for each bookmark, entering its name to jump back to the bookmark, and deleting the name when it's not needed. It is good for permanent bookmarks but very cumbersome for quick bookmarking. I just want to set anonymous quick bookmarks and jump back to them quickly. I don't want to manage the names.
The good thing about Emacs is that if you don't like the way things are working, you can roll your own. So I did.
Indeed. I'm no stranger to re-implementing something because no existing version was quite what I wanted, either. On rereading, my post didn't really come across like I intended.
Then again, even when implementing something that (it turns out) already exists, solving the problems that come up along the way almost always teaches one something.
And with Emacs extensions, even if you're the only one who finds it useful, it's still useful. :)