What you say is particularly true for image editing and Darktable especially: there are already tons of image editors available in all levels of dumbed-down-nes

What you say is particularly true for image editing and Darktable especially: there are already tons of image editors available in all levels of dumbed-down-ness. Lightroom is actually one of the more complex tools, all things considered. Which is exactly why Darktable is special: it is verbose and technical, but offers deep control and complexity, which is truly unique in image editors. (I want to compare it to Emacs, but it sort of lacks the extensibility to be a good analogy. But it is certainly more emacsian in spirit than any other image editor)