New users who plan to configure and extend Emacs thoroughly might not benefit from using another person's configuration because they will end up reconfiguring that configuration, which I think is more difficult than configuring vanilla Emacs.
During the first weekend that I started using Emacs, I ended up writing hundreds of lines of Emacs Lisp to optimize Emacs for my usage. I had never written Lisp before, and I think using another person's configuration would have hindered my progress.
But I think that reading other people's configurations can be super helpful.
Phil Hagelberg, the creator of Emacs Starter Kit, seems to have arrived at the same conclusion that I have:
During the first weekend that I started using Emacs, I ended up writing hundreds of lines of Emacs Lisp to optimize Emacs for my usage. I had never written Lisp before, and I think using another person's configuration would have hindered my progress.
But I think that reading other people's configurations can be super helpful.
Phil Hagelberg, the creator of Emacs Starter Kit, seems to have arrived at the same conclusion that I have:
https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit#history