I agree with the first part of what you wrote…
I don’t agree with this part. Just like I read the user’s manual for my cameras, I am certainly interested in reading about the capabilities of PhotoLab, or PhotoMechanic, or DarkTable, and all the rest. You test, and I read.
If I want to use my SB-800 flash, or my lightning sensor, or my polarizing filter, or how to use the basic adjustment in my software, I always try to “read the instructions”.
Oh well, you are partly correct. This is good. When I have issues on my Apple computers, I don’t experiment - I phone Apple Tech support, and very quickly the issue is solved, and resolved. Most of the time, ditto for my cameras.
I just dug out a lens I haven’t used in 20 years or so. Tomorrow I’ll try it out. Back in Michigan, it was very useful. But yes, I did read Ken Rockwell’s review and comments before mounting it on my camera.
Curious, do you still take photos? If so, what camera, and what are your favorite subjects? Is this a job, or a hobby for you. No need to answer, unless you want to.
Final thought - I was using a 2017 iMac computer as my final Lightroom computer, then switched to DxO, and replaced the iMac with my nephew’s Mac mini that I bought from him (so he could replace it with a new Mac mini but with the Apple chip, not his old Intel chip. In retrospect, that was a bad move on my part, but it was good for him. But my final thought, I had a complete set of all my Lightroom photos in a folder labeled lightroom for all my old digital photos. Tonight I got a 1TB external drive, and copied all those old photos to it - 30 megs of photos. I need to think about it before I actually do anything, but theoretically I can now import that whole 30 megs of photos into PhotoLab if I want to - which I’ll think about later. Thank you for your previous comments about this, as that got me thinking about catching up with what I never did years ago, when I stopped using Lightroom.