I honestly don't know all the tradeoffs here. I lived with electric coils for a few years when I was in a rental apartment and somehow we were still happy. It's not ideal but I can certainly picture criteria under which it's the optimal policy.

The point about Julia Child is that she was creating works of art using this supposedly unusable tool. If she can manage that, your average Joe should be able to bang together some burgers and saute some vegetables on one.