Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spacemacs has decent defaults, is easily extendable, and looks pretty good too.
Yea, I used to maintain a fairly complicated emacs config that I was never quite happy with. Nowadays, I just go with spacemacs. Tired of messing with stuff :)
A few years later, I'm still using my config and wouldn't go back. It's what allows me to make Emacs _mine_, after all. It requires a minimal amount of maintenance, mostly whenever I decide to upgrade the packages.