I don't understand your reasoning here. >my install kept getting broken by updates. Atom has never just fallen over dead like that. Could you elaborate on tha

I don't understand your reasoning here. >my install kept getting broken by updates. Atom has never just fallen over dead like that. Could you elaborate on that? This has never happened to me. If this happened because you wrote a bunch of custom layers then I'd argue that it's a non issue because in Atom you cannot do that at all (or at least experience the same problems if you do) >After quite a while it was still mysterious to me how to change simple things or to even trace where certain behavior was implemented. As you stated, the same is true for Atom. >In short: I didn't have the time. I have a lot of work to do, no time to fiddle. Time for what? The superior modification capabilities in Spacemacs by no means force you to fiddle. It seems to me that all your problems were caused due to you not being able to stop yourself to fiddling with the very sane and good defaults. This is similar to the argument I see about people who switch to an iPhone all the time. "I just didn't have time to fiddle. I wanted my phone to just work." So just don't exercise your freedom to fiddle then! The defaults in both cases are just as sane and if you some time in the future need to customize something for the sake of productivity, the you can! Sound to me like somebody moving to China from the US because they "Didn't have time to participate in politics anymore."