Part the Second
> massively disingenuous
No. Quite the opposite.
You just haven't tried to solve, or even have never encountered, the problems I and many others use these tools for. Weighted average portfolio risk on a correlation matrix? 1 formula in 1 cell, in MSExcel; in LO, a vomitous spray of 1 or more additional hardwired sheets plus location-/assumption-hardwired links farted throughout, with massive eye-watering bum-clenching fragility.
The average tech-focussed individual quite literally has no idea how shallowly they're scratching the surface of the tools. For the simple and non-negative reason that their normal day involves solving very different (and to my mind much harder) problems.
The reverse is true too. Try explaining to a quant or admin why vagrant is awesome for development. "Oh ok it's some sort of VM thing. So what." Or to an accountant why shell kicks arse. Then YOU blank out as they explain that unregulated transfer pricing is a major driver of globalisation rorting the smaller countries, if you understand how it's used.
Key Point: Until you have a problem to solve, you don't fully understand the various tools' relative usefulness or value.
E.g., I couldn't stand vi when I first had to use it. What a piece of shit! Then I had to do a lot of major wide and deep work in a hurry on raw Unix installs, HAD to learn its details to solve peculiar Deep problems, and promptly fell in love with it. Even today 30yrs later, I'll casually do something in 15secs and modern admins who'd scoffed at my offer to do their half-hour ballache for them in vi (and they laugh) will lean forward and say "how the hell did you do that so quickly".
E.g., trying to explain to a DOS Command File guru why unix's shell makes it look agonisingly broken, brain-dead, and incapable of doing anything non-trivial, but them pointing out that it's feature-for-feature identical with shell.
Unless you're trying to solve a particular problem AND have used the competing tools back-to-back for same, you won't really grok what that problem's problem-solvers value.
But what are scientific writers doing using Word in the first place?? Wrong tool. Should be using LaTEX. Word's only ever been intended for smaller less complex stuff. LaTeX, FrameMaker, InDesign etc for the big stuff. Hourses for corses.