I drove a stick shift for a little while, and I must confess, I absolutely hated it. Automatic is just easier, safer, and you can let the computer do everything. I beg your pardon, but I’m glad stick shift is ending.
However, the moment I could jump to an auto, I did. It's just SO much easier. I've been driving purely autos for over 20 years now. A lot of us see cars as a way to get us faster from A to B; there's no love affair here, it's just a tool. Any tool that makes it easier for the operator to use, is an improvement in my view.
Sure, keep the manual gearbox for the track. That's where 'fun' and 'hobby' driving should be. Out on the road, it's fuel economy (be it EV or Fossil) these days that really counts, and autos are much more economic.
I figured there were two options - either she could get rid of her manual transmission cars and replace them with automatics that I could drive (which wasn't a great solution because she really likes her manual transmissions and it seems dumb to ask her to get rid of something she loves) or I could learn how to drive a stick shift, and I knew the only way that I was _really_ going to learn how to drive a stick was if I was doing it every day, with no other options. Otherwise, I'd learn the theory of driving stick (clutch in, shift, clutch out slowly while you give it gas) but never actually be able to put it into practice at a time that it mattered.
Hence, the miata. My wife had to drive it home from the dealership when we got it, because I couldn't drive it myself, and I spent about a week trapped at home because I couldn't reliably get my car to start moving at traffic lights, but once I figured out how to reliably get from point A to point B again I realized that actually, it was kinda fun to get from point A to point B, and that there was no reason I couldn't just make a trip where point A and point B were the same place, driving just for the hell of it. Now I autocross once a month, go on drives with the local miata club, and put new car parts on my car to change what it does or how it sounds or how it feels, things that I never would have imagined I'd do back when I was driving an automatic just because I felt so much less connected to the use of the car.
Cars are basically appliances now. Who, apart from a narrow slice of demographics, really cares about their car? It's kind of like a washing machine in that way.
I did like the article, it accurately describes what we're losing. Driving is just much less an analog experience now than it used to be.