vim-awesome VS awesome-emacs

I encourage you to add plugins to your vim (tip: use vim-plug). Use vimawesome.com for inspiration.

I don't have a solution for each one of your points, but I'm going to point out a couple that are very useful for me at least (most of these can be found on a site like vimawesome or just native configuration/usage).

Vim Awesome. This is probs the best resource for text editor related plugins for vim. Browse around the site and see what looks like it would work for you. Fugitive, NerdTree, Syntastic, and surround are pretty great for utility.

Get inspired and find your new plugins at https://vimawesome.com/

I originally landed on https://neovimcraft.com because of https://vimawesome.com

then linked to a very useful guide and repository of plugins

Vim is infinitely customizable. While Vscode allows you to change the app’s color scheme, install plugins, and change a few app settings, Vim offers you complete control over the editor’s experience. You have thousands of plugins to choose from. You can completely remap any keybinding and create new shortcuts for tasks in your daily workflow. And giving you more power as a developer, you can completely reprogram or automate your Vim experience with the built-in Vimscript language or Lua for Neovim.

“A community driven list of useful Emacs packages, libraries and other items.” https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs

I've used emacs for about the same (started with microemacs in the 80s). I also had an extremely crufty init.el and recently decided to start over. I compared 19 emacs distributions (from this list and this r/emacs post). I looked at

But, to be honest, I think it simply is not for everyone. But sure one thing is lacking (as far as I know): a metatutorial. Like a big "chart" telling people what can be done with Emacs (with a few examples), something like https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs for newcomers.

Awesome-emqcs is a great resource for knowing what packages are there: https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs

For packages, Checking what people in the community commonly use, such as in https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs/ or checking packages for review in Doom Emacs helps a lot in selection. There are also great guides, such as Kristoffer Balintona's https://kristofferbalintona.me/categories/guides/. Personally, my bias in selecting packagges is towards the ones that integrate well with built-in Emacs functionalities. I could provide you a list if you want.

Take it slowly, check some packages that seem like they might be useful to you: (check https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs out for example).

Awesome Emacs for utility-oriented packages

Awesome Emacs, a community driven list of useful Emacs packages, utilities and libraries