[bpye]

I don't like the trend of Electron being used anywhere but I've really struggled to match my productive in VS Code in Vim or Spacemacs. I've certainly tried! I even spent a month or two last year using exclusively OpenBSD and nvi as a bit of an experiment - I did enjoy how quick my text editor opened for example, but I am still a lot more productive in Code. Any suggestions for someone wanting to learn without their productivity taking a dive? Maybe finding a Vim plugin for my existing editor and learning there before switching to "real" vim... I'm not sure.

[didibus]

For spacemacs, I'd recommend you try it again in Holy mode with Ivy. Then slowly customize some of it to add some features and key bindings to your liking that make you more productive.

Emacs really clicks if you are someone whose going to learn your way around Emacs lisp and customize things to what works best for your style.

And make sure you use the develop branch.

Once you've groked that, you can slowly try to switch to Evil bindings, and explore if you enjoy modal editing or simply get some inspiration from the Vim editing commands and style.