I don't know, I'll just leave this blog post that I just discovered today here because it perfectly reflects my opinion of GNOME and saves me from having to do another huge write up.

What I'm going to say anyway is that I never claimed that KDE is superior to GNOME, at least not in a way that claims this to be true for everyone (in another comment I even clearly stated that it's amazing that you have so much choice on Linux), although I'll clearly state that for me personally KDE just seems way superior and that I think that GNOME is hindered by its design decision to accommodate touch devices into their UI design. It also clearly is commendable that they want to keep GNOME accessible for all people, even if they have handicaps, but again why not just make this optional. For example large UI elements and text surely are a good thing for people with impaired vision. But why do I need to be forced to also use the same UI as them if I could fit way more info on the screen while still being able to see everything clearly? You wouldn't expect an OS to always force the screen reader to be on just because some people need it. So why is it ok to just force other accessibility features, or features that make the UI work better on another kind of device on users that don't need it. GNOME developers would say it's ✨ simplicity ✨ and that choice is bad, but for me it's just plain laziness.

Often this requires having insight into the goals of your app, not just in functional terms but also how it will be used and fit into peoples’ lives.

I also clearly think that it's pretty presumptuous to claim that the GNOME developers exactly know how people are going to use their devices or even to think that everyone has the same needs.

Resist the pull to try and make an app that suits all people in all situations. Focus on one situation, one type of experience.

I guess opinions here also differ, but I just find this kind of design philosophy to be plain stupid. Why should I have to adapt to the application, why is it bad if the application is able to adapt to my work flow. Not everyone uses their computer in the same way or even for the same things, so why limit and dump down a basic app like for example the file explorer, that is part of the core experience of the DE to only work in a really basic, limited and certain way?

But this brings me to the last thing I wanted to address:

The point of GNOME is to be simple, and if you need your DE to enable you to be a power user, you probably aren’t as much of a power user as you thought.

Excuse my wording but again this opinion is just plain stupid. Of course the software needs to go out of its way and accommodate lots of customization, workflows and features so you can use it in a powerful way.

Let's take the file explorer again as an example here. If I want to be able to manage files faster and a split panel view helps me to accommodate this for my specific task and use case, how should I do it if the application doesn't support split views?

If I need to batch rename files, and the file explorer doesn't support batch renaming files, how am I supposed to do it.

The difference between a normal user and a power user is the drive to take a deep dive into the advanced abilities of a software. A normal user that has to rename 20 files in a folder would rather rename them each individually instead of spending 5 minutes to look up and learn other ways the software provides them with to archive the same task, a power user that maybe needs to do this regularly or has hundreds of files he wants to rename would rather spend 5 minutes to learn the advanced features of a software and how to automatically make it rename the files for you. If the software like the really dumped down GNOME file explorer doesn't offer any advanced features or customizability, how do you expect the power user to use it in a powerful way?

If I wanted simplicity, sure, I could write all my code in the GNOME text editor, but people that want to be productive don't want simplicity, they want features that help them to be productive.

Well, now I've done it. Wrote a big wall of text again although I didn't want to. Anyway that's just my two cents and of course your and everyone else's opinion about this is allowed to differ. The only thing that I don't agree with at all is that my ability to be a power user isn't influenced by the software I'm using and what it provides... A plain text editor is just that, a plain text editor. It's lean, simplistic, and ... plain. But that's just it. I don't see why those properties should always be desirable. A text editor that provides support for plugins on the other hand might not be simple, lean or easy to use, but it can become pretty much anything and enable me to be more productive if I'm willing to learn about it. And imo that's clearly not debatable.