I recently tried out spacemacs and doom on too different new computers but I just couldn’t make them work for me. Maybe if I was coming to emacs from VIM they’d make more sense. I’d recommend that if you want to do emacs from scratch it’s probably easier to just start Witt vanilla and build up your own config. The hardest part is the muscle memory but you’re going to have that with spacemacs/doom too and then you’ve all the noise of these environments to contend with on top of that.
I came from VIM as well - Doom Emacs (which is just a cleaner version of Spacemacs) is learnable within a few days. Default config is almost 'good enough' for most, that's kind of the point.
Disagreed with "start with Vanilla Emacs and build your own config" though, if you just want to get started quick. Hell no, you'd be discouraged within the first 5 minutes and spend all of your time searching which ctrl-alt-meta-whatever to press to do trivial things, or copying/pasting obscure elisp snippets that you don't fully understand from stackoverflow.
> I came from VIM ... is learnable within a few days.
That was my point when I said
> if I was coming to emacs from VIM ... if you want to do emacs from scratch it’s probably easier
There is no quick start with any of these environments .. and even then it takes some detailed technical knowledge to get them up and running. They do sure look pretty! Although I found some of the default theming a little hard on the eyes for prolonged work.
> Default config is almost 'good enough'
The problem I had, was that to go beyond that it's a little trickier than what I'm used to, and there really isn't the same degree of support as what you get with more orthodox approaches. Though the community small is it is around these distributions are enthusiastic, helpful and friendly.
Like I say, the whole muscle memory thing feels quite alien at first, it soon becomes quite delightful, but not a lot more difficult to learn I think than VIM. I do like VIM, and there's many occasions where I'll use that for a quick command line based edit, and perhaps at some stage I will learn the VIM keybindings properly to the point where EVIL mode makes more sense.
I wouldn't gripe too much about the complexity of emacs, since that's where a lot of it's power lies (even if I never fully use it myself), but I wouldn't be in the habit of just copying/pasting random elisp. Usually if you've to go that much trouble it's not worth it, as somebody would have made it easier already.
You can switch Spacemacs and Doom into Emacs-mode keybindings. Command key sequences become hidden behind a shortcut and modes are disabled. It relaxes the learning curve.
> You can switch Spacemacs and Doom into Emacs-mode keybindings.
Aware of this, and tried it. However much of these distributions is streamlined towards EVIL keybindindings so you don't really get the full experience. Furthermore, a lot of the Emacs keybindings have been opinionated, which again isn't bad but a little jarring.
Also the vi keybindings tend to reactivate every now and again, and often you can take a few goes to realise this as you fumble in frustration and lose your train of thought.
> It relaxes the learning curve.
Yes but you'll have a learning curve either way, and by the time you've passed it you'll know neither vim nor emacs, and you won't get to experience the joy of tailoring your own development experience nor will you have be able to make use of much of to the decades of support content that's available on the web.
As I said, it makes more sense if you've already worked with VIM and want to have the best of both worlds but even then I think you're still missing out on some of the finer experiences Emacs has to offer.
