Author of the post here and I'm curious, did you ever try Spacemacs? Not that it's better or worse, but that's what got me into emacs. I'll have to give Doom a try!
I didn't try Spacemacs. When I decided to make the switch I looked at both of them, the big thing that won me over was that Doom Emacs advertised being lighter weight and quicker to startup which kind of sold me. I might be interested in trying Spacemacs in the future but right now I am still trying to navigate the Emacs world itself.