I can confirm, when I started computer graphics, I had absolutely no idea about linear space. I never had a formal education about it though, mostly random tuto

I can confirm, when I started computer graphics, I had absolutely no idea about linear space. I never had a formal education about it though, mostly random tutorials, demoscene stuff, things like that. I think one of the reason is that in the "old days", in many cases, performance mattered more than correctness. Models were, overall, very wrong, but they were fast, and gave recognizable results, which was more than enough. And working in gamma space as if it was linear saved time and wasn't that bad. That gamma space somehow matched CRT monitors response curve was an added bonus (one less operation to do). But things have changed, with modern, ridiculously powerful GPUs, people are not content with just recognizable shapes, we want some degree of realism and physical correctness. Messing up color space in the age of HDR is not acceptable, especially considering that gamma correction is now considered a trivial operation.