As a non-chef this has always been my suspicion, so I'll happily support you. I'm sure the immediacy of the temperature change matters to a degree (zing!) but how hard is it to wait a few seconds?

Its not a few seconds. The difference between high and low heat can easily exceed 1-1.5 minutes for gas vs typical electric most people have.

This makes cooking very difficult. When you turn down the knob from high to low, the element continues to cook your food at high to medium heat for another minute. This can burn or overcook your food. The converse of turning the knob from low to high is less bad, but can still be quite problematic.

You can easily anticipate this and turn down the nob early. When you inevitably fail to anticipate it, just remove the pan/pot from the stove for that time period. This is not rocket science. I get headaches from the gas fumes while cooking and I regret making the change every day. Yes I have a powerful vent hood. It is not enough for me personally.

Perhaps you are a better cook than I am. I look at physical signs like color changes, bubbling, texture changes etc, to move on to the next step. I can't always anticipate these changes ahead of time, and if I make a mistake in the anticipation, then getting back to the right temperature can easily add a few minutes to the cooking and potentially cause harm to the taste.

Of course, there are hacks like physically removing the pot that work, but it is added complexity on top of gas stoves.

The above obviously does not mean the gas stoves are objectively better - it only establishes that on one critical dimension gas is better than electric.

> the element continues to cook your food at high to medium heat for another minute

To be fair, so does the cookware. (Probably more so considering the lack of mass in a heating element.)

I have no professional experience, but I've used gas, coil top, glass top induction, and glass top non-induction. Of those four types induction is by far my favorite, but having to replace half of our pots and pans was annoying.

I would not be surprised if professional electric stoves are better, but the consumer experience is lacking. Coil top stoves often heat unevenly. The non-induction glass top experience is overall not great, with them seemingly being a downgrade from coil tops in all aspects other than cleaning and aesthetics.