Spacemacs

Spacemacs is a project which tries to provide saner defaults and a decent plugin selection. It is a configuration script customizing your emacs editor. Key bindings become vastly more ergonomical and visually it is a better experience. Emacs documentation is legendary, and all of it applies here since this is just a configuration script. You can customize and turn it into a whole different entity if you want.

I liked this project because it enabled me to enter the emacs world by lowering the cognitive load which a beginner emacs user experiences. The batteries included mentality offers incredulous assistence by allowing you to not think about much of the tools, all the while maintaining the flexibility and customization feel.

It is exceptionally easy to install, an equivalent setup by hand takes much more effort.

This project made emacs the go-to tool choice for many tasks such as latex document creation. Feels very productive.