Spacemacs, Prelude, and Scimacs are all good options depending on your use-case.
I mean if all you want is a text editor, some SCM integration, some build tool integration, syntax highlighting, and code completion then going with a specialized tool just for that is a good choice.
But the power of Emacs is that it can do nigh-anything and everything is a few lines of elisp away from being tightly integrated.
* Organize your tasks and projects with org-mode and work seemelessly with your team by syncing with org-trello.
* Use mu4e and magit integration to seemelessly send and apply patches and pull projects and todo items directly from email.
* Use one of the IRC clients or emacs-slack to do the same thing. Generate snippets on the fly in your team's chat from the currently selected text.
* Use org mode with org-babel and TRAMP to create interactive notebooks carrying out tricky tasks directly on the remote server from within emacs.
* Use emacsclient --tramp when you're SSH'd on a remote box to transparently edit in your local emacs.
* Replace tmux and tmuxinator with emacs-server.
I don't realy think it's small step up.