I have the exact opposite experience with vanilla Emacs. It works consistently without issue.
Regarding plugins you can use melpa and track the latest release of everything at all times.
You can use melpa and update most stuff infrequently save for the ones that are most important to you.
You can use melpa stable and run only stable versions of everything.
You can use melpa stable and run newer versions of a minority of plugins that are important to you.
What plugins you choose to use and and whether you choose stable or unstable could very well lead to vastly different experiences.
The best strategy is to carefully select plugins which are useful to you and high quality, and run the stable versions of most things updating your tools infrequently when a new major release adds something that looks useful to you.
Regarding plugins you can use melpa and track the latest release of everything at all times.
You can use melpa and update most stuff infrequently save for the ones that are most important to you.
You can use melpa stable and run only stable versions of everything.
You can use melpa stable and run newer versions of a minority of plugins that are important to you.
What plugins you choose to use and and whether you choose stable or unstable could very well lead to vastly different experiences.
The best strategy is to carefully select plugins which are useful to you and high quality, and run the stable versions of most things updating your tools infrequently when a new major release adds something that looks useful to you.