I recently switched form spacemacs to my own config that works in a similar way. I'm committed to modal editing and vim keybindings already, so spacemacs intro

I recently switched form spacemacs to my own config that works in a similar way. I'm committed to modal editing and vim keybindings already, so spacemacs introduced me to emacs and got me to convert, but it is a 90% for everyone solution. It adds tons of stuff that mostly works, stuff which you specifically mostly don't need. It mostly works, but coming from vim spacemacs is a big black box for the most part. I think it is a fantastic first step if you need to get something mostly working. Going through and building up my own .emacs with the parts I wanted was the way I finally learned to grok emacs for real. It took that step to actually be able to understand what's happening when something unexpected happens. I also discovered a lot of alternatives to the spacemacs packages, well known by real emacs users, that I much prefer to the choices made by the spacemacs team.