I have been using Spacemacs exclusively for around three or four years and I don't know if I can actively recommend it.
The problem is that the 'stable/master' branch of Spacemacs is incredibly outdated. I found myself needing fixes or improvements that existed in 'develop' so often that I migrated over to that branch. The idea of regularly cutting stable releases just isn't done within that project so if I'm recommending Spacemacs to new users I have to give them installation instructions that aren't provided by the documentation. Also, to get more up to date documentation I need to go to the layers docs in the GitHub repo and that can be hard to track down.
Every fresh install I've setup there has just been... so many problems with melpa and pulling down packages. Most of the time I have to repeatedly delete the package cache and restart Emacs until Spacemacs successfully pulls down packages - usually using the insecure flag so that packages aren't downloaded over HTTPS.
It's just... not as a polished as installing VSCode and a bunch of extensions. Spacemacs can require a lot of work and patience and I've just had too many things break with it over time.
The problem is that the 'stable/master' branch of Spacemacs is incredibly outdated. I found myself needing fixes or improvements that existed in 'develop' so often that I migrated over to that branch. The idea of regularly cutting stable releases just isn't done within that project so if I'm recommending Spacemacs to new users I have to give them installation instructions that aren't provided by the documentation. Also, to get more up to date documentation I need to go to the layers docs in the GitHub repo and that can be hard to track down.
Every fresh install I've setup there has just been... so many problems with melpa and pulling down packages. Most of the time I have to repeatedly delete the package cache and restart Emacs until Spacemacs successfully pulls down packages - usually using the insecure flag so that packages aren't downloaded over HTTPS.
It's just... not as a polished as installing VSCode and a bunch of extensions. Spacemacs can require a lot of work and patience and I've just had too many things break with it over time.