As any Emacs fan will tell you, Emacs is more than a text editor; it is a platform for character-mapped applications. Over the past few years, there has been an explosion of new developments on this platform, but we think Spacemacs deserves particular attention. Spacemacs provides an introduction to the Emacs platform, with a new keyboard user-interface, simplified customization layers, and a curated distribution of Emacs packages. One of the project's aims is to be the best of worlds by combining the Vim UI with the internal reprogrammability of Emacs. We consider developer productivity tools to be a vital part of effective software development, and if you haven't considered Emacs for a while, we suggest you take a look at how Spacemacs rethinks this classic development platform.