The best thing (IMO) about this guide is that it does not start with a gazillion lines of Elisp code to add to .emacs.d/init.el. I think people should be allowed to experience plain vanilla Emacs and decide for themselves what they want to change. If we just tell them "oh, you definitely want these modes enabled and these settings to these values", I feel they are somehow robbed of the best part of Emacs, namely figuring out what you want your own personal editing experience to be.
I definitely see your point about most guides detailing how to make your init (I don't understand why so many people just tell you to disable tabs, as though it's understood that everyone prefers spaces), but there are certain things that everyone will want. For instance, when given the choice between an older bytecode file and a newer source file, Emacs loads the older one by default. That sort of thing doesn't really seem like the sort of thing you want people to have to experience for themselves.
(The setting in question I am referring to is load-prefer-newer)
