The problem I have with doom and spacemacs is that it seems to be bringing people into the emacs community using the vi keybindings as default, including people

The problem I have with doom and spacemacs is that it seems to be bringing people into the emacs community using the vi keybindings as default, including people who were not vim users before... which is... strange. Vanilla Emacs keybindings, or cua-mode, are fine, and probably less of a learning curve than going modal. If you're already in that headspace, all power to you, but half the reason I got into emacs in the first place was because I couldn't stand vi.