I used to have my own (rather extensive) config, and switched to prelude a bit more than a year ago. I think the whole key to prelude is that it promotes useful packages, with an eye on beginners. I did change a whole bunch of things, but there's less I need to get rid of in prelude (like disabling guru-mode, what you mention - too patronising for me) than I'd have to add to vanilla Emacs, so I stuck with it. I can recommend investing some time and giving it a chance - I think most people won't be entirely happy if they just go for the out of the box behaviour.

My additions/removals are just a few lines now and I find the whole setup a lot more maintainable than rolling my own: https://github.com/fhd/prelude/tree/personal/personal

But yeah, all I can say is that it works for me (with a little investment), YMMV.