It's true that borosilicate Pyrex is better than the newer stuff, but honestly both are inferior to stoneware, cast iron or stainless steel. You will not find any professional kitchen cooking in glassware.
The only disadvantage is that it shatters if you drop it or hit it with enough force.
But there is a lot of stuff labeled "stainless steel" that stains. Sometimes even before you buy it.
Use in professional kitchen doesn't prove some underlying superiority, its just a different set of optimisations.
I want to make a caserole, fry on hob, then in the oven, in a dish that I can present on the table, put the leftovers in the fridge, and be able to put the container back in the oven or microwave to reheat. That isn't what a professional kitchen is optimising for.
The best glass for shatter resistance is the stuff used for large telescope mirrors, but that too would be expensive and I think somewhat easy to scratch. The scratch resistance would dramatically improve with a sapphire coating, as is done on the laser scanner windows in supermarket checkout lanes.
Metal doesn't really qualify if you want something transparent. I've noticed that it is very difficult to find stainless steel that is polished on the inside. The outside is normally polished, but I'm seldom trying to clean food off of the outside.
Well, there's Aluminium oxynitride aka ALON aka "Transparent Aluminium". Probably a bit expensive for cookware, though.
One can find articles that seem to imply the opposite.
> A few of Mr. Myhrvold’s microwave recipes — an eggplant Parmesan, which purports to turn the vegetable creamy instead of rubbery, and a steamed chocolate sponge cake — echoed ones I had seen before. (Mark Bittman has written in The New York Times about using the microwave to make several dishes, and “Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook” includes a recipe for microwaved pistachio spongecake.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/dining/microwave-cooking-...
I'm sure some chefs reject microwaves to make a point. I would contend its a minority though, I would also contend that it's to allow the Mr Rouxs of the world to justify inflated prices, rather than any inherent problem with the machine.
Hell, even some of the sponge cake on the menu at el Bulli was microwaved.
Things like crumpled aluminum foil, a metal fork, or random bits of decorative metal in a dish could cause electrical arcing because charge can build up on the "edges" (e.g. the tines of a fork).
Of course, it's more convenient to use something like glass because we just don't have to give it a second thought (aside from the whole exploding glass problem). And for that, it's reasonable to simply avoid putting any metal in a microwave.