I don't blame you for switching from Darktable at all. Darktable can be quite powerful but it suffers from ease of use and discoverability issues. It's not reasonable for a photo processing application to expect its users to deeply understand how it all works under the hood in order to get good results.
As someone who did a deep dive into understanding DT's scene-referred modules, it changed the way I think of photo processing. I now have a hard time using any other photo software.
What did you use as a resource for this? I struggle with DT on every update to get my photos looking like I want when the semantics of a module change or a module is replaced with something theoretically better but practically with more controls that I now need to relearn.
Yup, I have the same experience even in smaller ways. Wavelet decomposition, parametric masks, Lab curves -- these things are fundamental to how I think of image processing now, and it all came out of forcing myself to be productive with Darktable.
None of those things are available in commercial processing software.
(Granted, it was a few years ago I did photography stuff last, so this may well have changed since then.)
I recently upgraded my system and now I can't even open a folder in Darktable, I have to add it to some bullshit "library", put the library in a "collection", and then open a "film roll" from the collection. Why can't I just browse a filesystem tree and click a folder, damnit ...
As someone who did a deep dive into understanding DT's scene-referred modules, it changed the way I think of photo processing. I now have a hard time using any other photo software.