Since darktable introduced the scene referred workflow I would argue it's an extremely steep learning curve for anyone coming from display referred software (Lightroom, Capture One etc). Scene referred is very much a cine-thing and I know of no other still image software that uses it. dt v3.6 made scene referred default. Aurélien has been one of the driving forces behind the switch to scene referred and his hour long…
"The scene-referred workflow places an emphasis on performing image processing in the linear scene-referred part of the pixelpipe. This helps to reduce artifacts and color shifts that can result from processing non-linear pixel values and, by decoupling the image processing from the characteristics of a specific display, it makes it easier to adapt your work in the future to new display media, such as high dynamic range displays."