But most of the things you do require a certain amount of tinkering, even basic stuff like setting up C indentation, making Emacs not use tabs, and configuring keyboard shortcuts - especially in the early days, when you might not quite understand how things fit together.
Compare and contrast with Visual Studio Code, which has a much smoother onboarding experience.
You are in full control of how much tinkering you do, though. Strange to blame a tool for this.