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I tried using helm when I wanted to learn emacs and my problem is that helm is incredibly ugly, and customizing it would take a good amount of time.

Really? You should checkout my guide: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-intro.html and see if Helm is ugly or not. Nothing like Helm (except itself) ever exists. Check "Why Helm is powerful" section: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-intro.html#sec-28