> it seems like Darktable becomes more and more unusable due to a lack of good defaults and easy configurability.

The funny thing is, in my personal experience, Darktable defaults and configurability have actually markedly improved in the last few years. Usability even more so.

Frankly the worst instance of bad defaults and parameters were in the author's own filmic module, which were truly terrible in the beginning. They improved after a few years/versions, but it's still quite the hypocrisy to then complain about this very fact in the rest of the software.