To be clear, I am not judging, I am simply making observations.
At this stage you can say that KiCad has arrived on a stage that they (REALLY) need to start working about these things.
I guess my reason for mentioning it, is simply because to make people more aware of it.
I noticed a lot of frustration and heavy discussions around these kind of subjects.
What gives you the idea they aren't working on it? However, do keep in mind the hobby/non-profit/pet-project aspect of it. It still applies, even though it is not a one man project anymore. There is no deep pocketed company behind it. People were up in arms with excitement that CERN is behind it but CERN people (which were 1 or 2 part-time folks, I believe) are working first and foremost on things that CERN projects needed. So they added stuff like the push-and-shove routing.
And re lot of frustration and heavy discussion - that's the issue. Lot of discussion but nobody actually contributes to the project (whether by code or money) and expects someone else to fix things. As if there was "someone else" to do it. There isn't, it is as simple as that.
Then there is also a lot of griping because Kicad/FreeCAD/whatever doesn't work in the same way people are used from other tools. Or lacks a specific feature. So it is immediately declared useless, piece of crap, good for nothing toy. Etc. As if someone was forcing them to use the software.
Criticism is good but it needs to be constructive. Declaring something unusable only because it doesn't work the same way as Altium/Eagle/whatever and demanding it to be changed, as is often the case, is not really helpful. Granted, some developers may not be the easiest people to work with, but that is not really an excuse. Being able to compromise and to deal with difficult personalities is also part of engineering.
Btw, with all the respect, but the fact that someone is a professor doesn't always mean that know it all.
We are talking more about practical experience in this case.
So what works or doesn't work for people.
I certainly wasn't implying that. But when someone works in the field he did (I believe he is retired now), he certainly wasn't only a theoretician. And the folks from CERN who use Kicad to design and build boards for their particle detectors also don't know what they are doing? CERN is hardly so cash-strapped to not be able to afford something like Altium, so I guess there may be some other reasons why they are using (and supporting) Kicad .
For that reason almost every professional program has the ability to completely change the interface to your own taste.
I guess we are not living in the same world then. Or Microsoft, Autodesk, Unity3d, Unreal, Blender, etc. (just to name a few things I use on a daily basis) didn't get the memo. At best you can customize colors, screen background and hotkeys (sometimes not even those). And that's that.
Oh and I guess Apple is not professional at all by this standard - the vendors mentioned above are mostly lazy to add customization options, on the other hand Apple actively removes them or discourages their use for the sake of the control of the 'experience'.
Or my Emacs, which is notorious for its customization possibilities, is the poster child for usability.
Sorry but this is a silly argument.