I tried to get into emacs a few years ago and just got fed up with the incredible regularity with which packages broke during routine updates. It was at least an hour a week on average, I feel, conducting bug hunts for either minor (this or that keybind/function doesn't work) or major (I can't get any packages to load) bug hunts. Was I doing something wrong? How do emacs people deal with this?

Admittedly, I was using Spacemacs which probably has way more packages than a bespoke emacs configuration, but you must understand if people get turned off when they ask you how to use an editor and your answer is "first, spend a few weeks setting it up and understand how each of your many packages works".