They are made by and for photographers. This software is designed for many use cases, not just creative photography - hence multiple demosaicing algorithms. AI masking is missing exactly because it's made by photographers - they don't have the required expertise. UI is not intuitive because a) it's designed by photographers' committee, not UI designers, and b) you are familiar with a completely different workflow.
Most photographers don't know how develop software at all.
Please explain why photographers need 20 differnet sharpening methods, 5 demosaicing algorithms, many colour corrections that are almost useles if AI masking is not present?
Coders often lost in all kind of geeky features that missing actual usability by targeted audience. Bloated software is not what I would expect from alternative to commercially used proprietary software.
Because it's not necessarily about creative/artistic photography, it's also for things like e.g. microscopy or negative or scan processing, and it's not an alternative to Lightroom which does "magic" unacceptable in many technical use cases.
You can ignore features that aren't made for you, and actually I think they're mostly hidden by default in DT (make a preset if you don't like the default tool selection). All these features were added because somebody needed them at some point, the DT/RT/ART communities are chaotic and lack vision but they're actually using their stuff.
>Coders
As I said, this is not software made by coders for coders. This is exactly how the software made by photographers would look if they lacked organization, focus, and UX skills. If it was made by coders (and UI designers), it would probably have looked like Lightroom and had AI selection.
Another terrible design in darktable is default settings. I have no problem with options, but then you need carefully choose defaults that are selected questionable here - pure exhibitionism right after opening software.
I don't agree with your statement about developing by photographers. If so, there is higher probability that they would focus on UI with more aesthetic care than coders would do.
Lack of AI masking is too expensive to use by professionals. You simply cannot afford to mask manually bunch of images. Wider adoption among photographers is simply impossible.
