Another, long-time Vim user here. I recommend Emacs Doom [1]. It was built especially with Vim users in mind.

[1]: https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

Vim user here. I use Vim for pretty much everything, but I do have Spacemacs installed purely for two modes:

1. Org-Mode

2. Regex Mode

org-mode is just too good not to use. I use it for interview notes, writing documentation for other teams and non-technical staff, my blog, and probably other stuff I can't think of right now.

The part where I heavily disagree with the author of this article is when he says you don't have to use emacs for org-mode. My, personal, belief is you're missing out of some of the power if you opt for Vim + Pandoc. The exporters in emacs support a lot more features (that I do use) than Pandoc does. If you can get away with just Pandoc then great, but I opted for Spacemacs (coming from Vim).

Coming from vim, I'd suggest spacemacs, following along with whatever docs they have.

Coming from anywhere else, I'd just start with the emacs tutorial (C-h t) and then move on from there.

I personally think that there's a lot to like about the vi text-manipulation commands, but that spacemacs does a bit too much out of the box. I just use Prelude:-)