Clean != good. These are tools, not pieces of art.
Look at how many people here recommend rebinding caps lock to "esc" and control to caps lock and all other sorts of editing to the keys... should you remind them that rebinding keys is unnatural and the tool should be used the same way it's always been?
I guess it stems from the fact that I've never understood the argument that the touch bar took away the "esc" key... but on every touch bar MBP I see at the Apple Store, the esc key is still there, still right where it was, and still has the same functionality. The only difference is now if you don't use the esc key, you have the ability to remove it and put a more useful key there instead. But somehow this is a bad thing. I don't understand it.
If it's a tool, like you claim, it should be useful for getting work done. But instead you seem to actually want it to be made according to your exact design and visual preferences, which to me sounds more like you're actually looking for a piece of art.
Replacing the top row with the touch bar, in this analogy, is like someone else coming into your workshop and replacing several tools’ grips with big padded things that completely ruins the physical feedback you expect to feel, and never realized you used for fine control until you didn’t have it.
For me when I switched to a Mac, the hardest thing to get used to was the lack of a forward delete key (the Windows-style use of the delete key) and having to use a key combination instead. Even today I still struggle with the lack of pgup and pgdn keys, and the lack of home and end.
In light of commonly-used keys that are actually missing, I just struggle to accept the idea that the Esc key being a touch button but still existing is a hill worth dying on. Especially when, since the touch bar is customizable, everyone can now swap their (relatively) useless F1-F12 keys for the (relatively) more useful Home, End, Forward Delete, Page Up, and Page Down keys. Or whatever else they want it to be.
To me, it's like the digital equivalent to swapping a workshop's dedicated phillips-head screwdriver with one that lets you switch ends to be phillips or flathead or torx or whatever. Some small number of people may complain "but it's not the same way it's always been!", but it sure does make life a lot easier for a lot more people.
"It's not the same way it's always been" has been Apple's driving mission since... well basically forever. Think Different, right?
My only complaint with the touchbar is its too easy to accidentally engage Siri.
Other than that it’s a good idea IMO.
System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Control Strip
You can remove the Siri shortcut in the system preferences.
The touchpad is fine for that. No need for duplicating functionality.