You put into words the things I've noticed UIs evolving away from.

It just feels like UIs of software 10,20, even 30 years ago were designed for "operators", people that actually worked with the software for hours at end, and so with a little bit of learning you could be dancing with keybindings and doing stuff as fast as CLI nerds.

Nowadays most seems to be optimized for first hour of use of new user and not much else, and the exceptions are software made "by operators, for operators", like for example KiCAD.

Indeed you did; half of my brain capacity is currently being used by a background process sifting through everything I remember ever thinking or learning that's associated with computers, to re-evaluate it in context of the difference between "users" and "operators".

Seriously. Until your comment, I thought the two terms to be synonyms.