I'm not a huge fan of KDE, but I prefer it strongly over Gnome. Not because of aesthetics, but because Gnome is a pain for me to use and it's very hard, sometimes impossible, to configure it to be better.

> they are so used to bad interfaces they have no idea what a good one looks like.

What is a "good" or "bad" interface has a huge amount subjectivity to it. Just because you dislike a certain UI doesn't mean it's bad. It just means it's bad for you.