I considered Spacemacs, because I used Vim extensively in the past (and still use it for some tasks), but I felt that Vim emulation in Emacs would only hinder my understanding of Emacs and steepen the learning curve. So I ended up incorporating useful bits and pieces from Spacemacs into my .emacs config, but stayed with native Emacs key bindings. I'm comfortable with my choice, but please change my mind if you feel like it.