However I have been using vi exclusively for 15 years. I have a passing familiarity with Emacs bindings from working shells, but they are an exercise in misery.
So I want to change Emacs to use Evil. That is easy enough, right? Just a simple config.
But I want to use git with Emacs. This is one of those things that people talk about, right? "Emacs as an operating system you can live in". But I never used Magit before. How does it work? I haven't the faintest clue. I don't even understand exactly what is the goal of the software. Is it supposed to automatically check in code when I save a file or something?
And before I can use it I need to make sure it works with Evil.
So how do I modify a piece of software that I don't know how it works and never used before with a programming language I have never used before with a set of key bindings that were not originally intended to be used with Emacs, which I never used before?
And how do I do this without losing all of my productivity?
Now do the same for Python language support, and maybe get email working, and what is this "Ansiterm" crap and why did anybody think that "eshell" was a good idea? How do I make that work with my bash config?
This is the sort of challenge I always ran into with Emacs. I'd spend a weekend struggling with it. Messing around with it. Trying to get stuff to work and trying to figure out Elisp.
Then I would realize I was spending 90% of my time in Vim trying to figure out how to fix my Emacs config.... And then give up.
Rinse and repeat this every 14 or 20 months or so.
---------------
Spacemacs was the first time I actually could use Emacs.
All of a sudden I had the help of dozens, if not hundreds, of experienced Emacs users that have been using and living in Emacs for years. They already worked through the hard part of getting magit working, creating an easy to way to discover functions, ability to get various languages working easily and seamlessly, etc.
Doom provided the same thing and it was even better and faster.
And guess what? None of this excluded benefiting from writing my own configurations and scripts.
And it is not an accident that these things are focused on making Evil work.
-------------
So why Spacemacs? Why Doom?
Because:
1. You get the benefit of other people's experiences. If your config doesn't work you can get help. And when you get good at it you can help other people.
2. It is a lot easier to get started with something that works than something that doesn't.