I understand your point, but a minor retort: You get the same sort of "gotchas", historical choices, baggage, etc from new-ish code that does "too-much" and can be considered black-box "magic" without delving into it, reading docs, tutorials, and having sometimes just plain having experience in it.

I think a potential overarching point that started this thread: Tech should evolve, but it should also stay steady and simple to use. Too much of the "new" stuff is not just a good natural evolution of people solving problems, it's people adding layers of complexity and fluff where there need be none.