Yeah that's fair. I'd have to figure out how people are getting on without layers, probably take myself back to basics and pretend I know nothing and see how the 'learn from scratch' track teaches these skills today.

OTOH, I also getting to the old dog point, not because I can't learn new tricks, but because I have so many responsibilities I have little time to do so, which is another reason ideological camps like this form. Which frankly is the wrong reason for them to exist.

I should go figure out how the new apps work, but when I do need to do graphics (since its not my main bread and butter but usually an additional skill I need to help develop something) I habitually pull out the familiar to save time.

To add to this, it's not like other apps have just blindly copied Photoshop. Affinity Photo has shape tools that are far less convoluted than Photoshop but they still feel instantly familiar.

Even when they couldn't stick to common patterns (such as the eyedropper tool) they still manage to communicate how the feature works just by designing intelligently, no Googling required.

But every time I've used gimp, common tasks feels like a collection of workarounds for missing features. Someone elsewhere in this thread asked how to place an ellipse and got told that wasn't something commonly needed but to make a selection and fill it using the paint bucket tool (and a modifier key).

That solution is jankier than MS Paint, which at least offers you an actual tool and a short period where you can make non-destructive modifications to the stroke, fill, size and position.

But since you've technically got the circle you asked for, it's treated as "people who don't like GIMP are just haters" rather than "people don't want to use bad tools for their job"