I'm not sure that I would recommend Prelude for someone who's already got a memory stick with their emacs config files in their pocket. On the other hand, I do recommend it for people who are new to Emacs, especially those who want to see what a well-tuned personal setup can do for you (especially compared to the out-of-the-box product.)
I'm at around a quarter-century with emacs, too, but I tried Prelude a few years ago when I was looking to integrate magit into my workflows better and became interested in projectile.el. I ended up changing a few of the initial defaults, but I must say that I found Batsov's set up very clean and logical. I ended up adopting some of his choices even on packages I'd already set up for myself. The thing that had always irritated me about things like Evil and Spacemacs, even CUA-mode, was the attempt to make emacs something it wasn't--Prelude, on the other hand, felt like emacs properly tuned.
I've moved on to my own curated set now, but quite a few bits migrated from Batsov's work into my own, and I still look at the source for Prelude if I'm looking at incorporating some package into my personal setup.
I'm at around a quarter-century with emacs, too, but I tried Prelude a few years ago when I was looking to integrate magit into my workflows better and became interested in projectile.el. I ended up changing a few of the initial defaults, but I must say that I found Batsov's set up very clean and logical. I ended up adopting some of his choices even on packages I'd already set up for myself. The thing that had always irritated me about things like Evil and Spacemacs, even CUA-mode, was the attempt to make emacs something it wasn't--Prelude, on the other hand, felt like emacs properly tuned.
I've moved on to my own curated set now, but quite a few bits migrated from Batsov's work into my own, and I still look at the source for Prelude if I'm looking at incorporating some package into my personal setup.