I used Doom Emacs since I came from Vim but have recently switched to what is called Vanilla Emacs which basically means install emacs and use blank init.el file. The init.el file is where all your custom configuration for emacs will be built up over time.

If you don’t have a muscle memory from Vim keybindings I would start with Vanilla. Keep your primary editor handy as you build up the init.el if you need to get some work done very quickly but begin to ween yourself off the primary editor as you figure out how to do things more efficiently in emacs. If Emacs is keeping you from getting some work you have pressure to get done you may burn out and throw it away.

I like this person’s youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SystemCrafters/playlists

Emacs from Scratch on that playlists page is a good video series.

He starts off with a blank init.el and builds it up over the series. By video 7 he gets to something called org-babel and using org plus code blocks in org to create your init.el.

This is a very nice setup because it allows you to add comments in org format with links etc in a structure you like. It keeps things organized and as your init.el gets larger you can use the org-mode features (org-mode is built into emacs these days) to hide and expand what you want to focus on. I use it to keep detailed notes and explanations and links back to package repos on github and documentation.

This is a popular example of such a setup (advanced) using org to generate the init.el https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/index.html or less pretty on github https://github.com/sachac/.emacs.d/blob/gh-pages/Sacha.org

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Edit:

I’ve also found ChatGPT fairly good with emacs-lisp (configuration language for init.el) and emacs questions. Not perfect and you will find out when you put the wrong code it suggests and it doesn’t work but it gets things right more often than wrong.