Eh, if you're going to be using it as a text editor for 8 hours a day, you can take 2 minutes to install a package, surely.
I think you are confused about the definition of Emacs as a product. As stated in its documentation: "Emacs is the advanced, extensible, customizable, self-documenting editor." It is designed for advanced power users who are willing to extend and customize it. What you consider to be "must-have defaults" is as arbitrary and controversial as having an option to use vim keybindings or some popular dark theme out of the box. If you're saying that someone can't use Emacs because it doesn't open each file on a dedicated tab, maybe that's not Emacs's target audience?
Anyway, I do remember my younger self. I, too, was raging about this specific thing. I didn't understand "the philosophy of buffers," and people kept telling me "trust me, you don't need the tabs..." and I hated that. But I promise you, and please trust me, you really do not need the tabs. I've been there, I tried disproving everyone who told me that, and I admit that I was wrong.
That doesn't mean the default experience should be bad. Why not start with a good experience and let users build on top of that.
>What you consider to be "must-have defaults" is as arbitrary and controversial as having an option to use vim keybindings or some popular dark theme out of the box.
Which is why it is important to get feedback from real users. Get a random person off the street to use Emacs and see if they have an easier time with tabs. Repeat with intermediate and advanced Emacs users. See what works and what doesn't.
>If you're saying that someone can't use Emacs because it doesn't open each file on a dedicated tab, maybe that's not Emacs's target audience?
It's not that it's impossible it would be that users have a harder time to accomplish what they want.
>maybe that's not Emacs's target audience?
This is the kind of needless gatekeeping that will lead to Emacs death.
This isn't "gatekeeping". What are you talking about? I expressed my personal opinion about one aspect of the default interface. I'm not an Emacs maintainer, RMS' cousin, Zaretskii's dog sitter, or director of FSF, I don't "call the shots".
Emacs is completely free to use, distribute and contribute to. Go ahead then, come up with convincing arguments, compose a proposal and write to the emacs-devel mailing list. Maybe, after all you are truly a bright-minded visionary and those dorks that been maintaining Emacs for over 45 years just don't know anything?
> it is important to get feedback from real users
Nobody is stopping you from giving such feedback. I don't think there were many cases in history where technological breakthroughs happened due to random people arguing about a subject on a forum like HN or Reddit. You have complete freedom to do something about it if you passionately believe in it.