[tuhdo]

You can use the popular Emacs Prelude: https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude . It's an Emacs setup that improves the original Emacs. The author is also a ROR developer, so he sure knows how to configure it properly.

To learn the basics of Emacs, start with my mini-manual: http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html