Frontmacs
I have mixed feelings about emacs starter kits. On the one hand I'm always happy that more people might discover emacs. It's quite simply the most powerful text editor out there. Hands down. I could not imagine using a computer seriously without emacs.On the other hand, the power of emacs comes from the fact that it's essentially a lisp interpreter which is good at doing text editor stuff. If you abstract this away then what you get is an editor which is implemented in emacs, but is ultimately comparable to any other text editor.Emacs really shines when you make it your own. And that goes far beyond the usual "customisation" that you see. I have files full of macros that help me write lisp which eventually changes the way the editor works. And some of that functionality helps me write the macros that help me write lisp that (...and so on).For those that don't use emacs the above might sound bizarre. Maybe it's only attractive to a few programmers. Or maybe you have to try it before you really understand. I don't know. But that's why I have mixed feelings.