I don't want to learn how GIMP works. I want to edit photos.

Gimp is unintuitive for a lot of people including myself. I've tried it for years and just don't like the way it works. Forcing people to do it your way is not always the best way. This is an option, it's not forced on anyone and it's great for those that want to transition. People have requested it for years.

When I first started using emacs, I bounced off of spacemacs because it was all very unfamiliar and confusing, with a lot of its own terminology added on to emacs’. I tried again later with doom emacs and, maybe because of some familiarity gained in the spacemacs run, managed to make it stick.

A year or two ago, I ditched doom and rolled my own emacs config, having gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to do so from my years with doom.

Both doom and spacemacs exist to make the (relatively) strange nature of emacs more welcoming to users of other IDEs. I’m not sure I would have stuck with it without them, so I’m not sure the hard way is always better.