Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration.

Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in.

If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find doesn't work, because it depends on support from environment. A full text search should be built into the editor.

I don't think I've ever heard emacs described as "batteries included" -- maybe more like "batteries available." If anything it has the opposite reputation, that doing anything requires extensive and continual config adjustments, which isn't accurate either.

There are plenty of emacs "starter kits" that do aim to provide more of a batteries included experience. My favorite is doom, it's worth checking out and does setup all the features you mention.

Pointing new users at those more advanced default configs as an option would be pretty helpful, I think.