At least VS Code has to be installed. It is a plus for Google Docs & Co, but not universal. And in most cases, instead of installing you now have to create an account.
>Docs are available on every computer we log into. Multiple people can edit the same document.
Those features are completely independent from the platform the application uses. Those features are commonly implemented in web apps because for a long time they had no other choice, but cloud storage and collaborative editing can be equally well implemented in a destop application.
cough Blender ...
I would point to Eclipse as another classic example of "obviously designed by an engineer". There's tons of functionality under the hood and it's a fantastic jumping-off point for further customization... but its layout is intensely non-intuitive in so many ways compared to a purpose-built IDE.
Everything is locked away in menus and "perspectives". If you're writing a Java web app - do you want the Java perspective, the Java EE perspective, the Web perspective, or the Debug perspective?
I hear GIMP's no picnic to work with either but can't confirm personally.
It used to be that OSS was developed by people that actually used it. Maybe it wasn't pretty, it had a steep learning curve, but it got things done and was efficient once you learned how. Often you got fresh perspectives on how an interface could be done, since people got fed up with existing solutions.
Nowadays you get UX experts preaching how an interface is supposed to look like, which mostly means copying Apple or Google. You get tons shiny whitespace. Burger menus, because that's what "everybody is used to".
GIMP with "good UX people" would turn into a bad copy of Photoshop.
This is absolutely not true.
Going to windowing GUIs from character-mode DOS was a massive usability improvement. No more exotic ctl-alt-function key combos (or control-control sequences for WordStar users like me).
Going from desktop apps to webapps changed the abstraction layer of how we access and share documents. No more installing software on the desktop. Docs are available on every computer we log into. Multiple people can edit the same document.
Maybe you don't care about document sharing and would be happy installing old school word processors and spreadsheets? That's a fair statement to make, but the market appears to be voting otherwise.