My .emacs has been more or less the same for the past 10 years. The 4 most critical lines are these:

 (global-set-key "\C-h"     'delete-backward-char)
 (global-set-key "\M-^"     'query-replace-regexp)
 (global-set-key "\C-x:"    'goto-line)
 (global-set-key "\C-x\C-e" 'compile)