I think this is definitely the best starting point. Doom is a great setup, and it offers a lot of configurability that is well supported (it's fast, too!). I have my own setup I'm just too attached to atm, otherwise I'd just switch over.

For clarity's sake, evil-mode (emacs-vim) is a vim binding layer on top of emacs, like vim plugins in other editors. Leave it off if you're starting out and don't know vim, enable it if you are comfortable with vim.