https://www.startpage.com/ works. DDG does not.
The most I've had to do is search the bangs documentation if i can't find the search engine i want. (for Terraria stuff i sometimes wanted `!terrg` rather than `!terraria`, and ended up searching to find the former)
As here: https://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=brad%20pitt
No bangs needed.
The point is that with DDG, you have a uniform syntax for searching multiple services that doesn't require any special cooperation from your browser or those services, doesn't require any setup apart from using DDG and only requires you to learn one new concept.
And this will work anywhere where webpages work (like, say, lynx), and will work consistently. There are thousands of !bangs, from things ranging from amazon, to wikipedia, to maps, to dictionary definitions... You aren't limited to a handful of hand picked services that your browser decided to support out of the box, or that you decided to manually configure.
Also, there is generally decent support to switch languages and regions for services that support it. For example, "!w" gets you "wikipedia", "!wsimple" gets you the "Simple English" version and "!wpt" gets you the Portuguese version.
IMHO, this is all extremely convenient.
At the end of the day, though, it's a personal choice I make. I put in a small sliver of extra effort and get in return a big boost in privacy. It's worth it for me, but perhaps not for everyone.
If you don't care about your privacy and don't want to dealing with learning a new search engine to the level you've learned google, then this article probably isn't for you.
The idea you wouldn't be able to do your job or that it would be impacted in a nontrivial way by switching to a different search bar in your browser seems ridiculous, correct me if I'm wrong.
Personally I would absolutely consider this to be wrong.
There is only so much cognitive energy we all have during the day. You have to spend it wisely. There are certain groups of people on the fringe (early adopters, Linux desktop folks, the people who run their own mail servers, etc...) who have the willpower (and can afford!) to trudge through the transition from one tool to another. Sometimes you can see the value of that transition before you make it, and so it's easier to push through. Other times, there is no light at the end of the tunnel or it's not very bright. The same thing happens when people switch operating systems or programming languages.
So there is always a cost to switching tools. That cost is either going to pay for itself in the end or it's not. I do not see DDG ever paying for itself.