castlemacs VS quickrun

I started my Emacs journey with Spacemacs but it wasn't good since it's not actually Emacs - you need to learn entirely new stuff on top of Emacs stuff. In the end I gave up and settled with IntelliJ IDEA for Scala development. In five years I returned to Emacs, but started from very simple Castlemacs distribution, learning the meaning of each line, copying to my config only settings I needed, mostly related to configuring Emacs to behave properly on macOS. I don't bother with Doom Emacs, my startup time of 3 seconds doesn't bother me.

I started from this https://github.com/freetonik/castlemacs, it's not been updated for a few years, but a good starting point if you're on macOS.

https://github.com/freetonik/castlemacs is the approach where I finally understood and was the missing tutorial for mac users. I've done the emacs embedded tutorial, but got stuck at that weird usage of ESC key as Meta key. That repo laid down the bridgework to me being comfortable with emacs. Still very sparse, but getting there!

Lower the barrier to entry, maybe give them your configuration or some sort of starter-kit, I think castlemacs is good choice as it is quite simple and useable. Tell them to fork it on Github and use it.

I think IJKL keys are probably better then arrow keys, see how castlemacs does it.

Since you are asking, to give an example of a package that has some similar features, I would say "quickrun.el" would be one.

I guess, to start with, it is best to answer for yourself why you would recommend users to use Emacs. Even better if you write it down for yourself, so that you could publish it as a blog post (in org-mode). If they are coding in some particular language, then also explain your optimal workflow for that language. E.g. when you are teaching python, then tell them how to use the inferior-shell and send code to it. Or maybe how to use ipython notebooks or emacs jupyter. Or when coding C, explain how to use Makefile's or quickrun. I guess if you recommend Emacs, you expect them to learn some elisp (I would never recommend users to use Emacs without learning some elisp). Tell them that elisp is more fun than it looks initially, and it isalmost as easy as e.g. python. Possibly show how to use basic magit, and org-mode and definitely tell them about evil and Spacemacs/Doom (or other starter kits). In the end, simply try to motivate your enthusiasm and offer a helping hand. But accept that (some) users have no need/time for it. Then second, use the answers here to improve your 'inspirational talk/writing'...

is it like quickrun? https://github.com/emacsorphanage/quickrun