In my observation, bay12 is far less friendlier or approachable for newer players than reddit subforum.
I often see "I've played this since 20xx", back in non-existent feature in the current release.
Ok, that does mean you did not look into new devs, new mods, new tools and are content with vanilla that mods & starter packs are "too much to learn" and not worth your time?
Probably. Because I felt similar to other games with user/community modding. RimWorld and XCOM2 for example.
For DF, I mean, sure it's a valid reason to choose pure vanilla than other display options. But then, looking at the LNP, there is an option to play with vanilla display sets. It does the same task as using notepad to edit the right file.
Other than that, there is the "dfhack enabled automatically in LNP" some time ago. In the past, maybe. The recent versions did have the option to not run dfhack at all--it was even set to OFF. And even turning it on, I still have to check which options I want to run at the start. The tweaks the save FPS seems helpful.
Anyway, it's a nice tool to have, and not everyone will want such tools. I just want to point out that it's nice to have such tools.
As far as bloat size, it's a non-issue for me having access to decent download speed.
DTherapist is convenient to use. Having a 2nd monitor is handy--saves an alt-tab. Likewise, I've seen the labor plug in, but I find having another window with other useful info docked that is available in DT more helpful in micro-managing dorfs.