1. Surgery, bone doctoring and diagnostician are not in fact on by default, only wound dressing and suturing, neither of which have any issues with those with no skills doing them except speed. Fishing is also off-by-default, if that wasn't clear.
Wow, it's almost like the labor detail interface is so oblique that it's impossible to tell at a glance whether the behavior they observed was because of a change in default labor assignments or something else! Gee, I can't possibly imagine that being trouble for people who are actually new to the game!
2. If you really think work details are worse than the old system, you either haven't used the old system or you didn't even try to use the new one before going to complain about it
(I will note that I meant to say "worse than the old system WITH DT", not "without", which is a rather substantial difference lol.)
The work detail system is, despite the current flaws, certainly better than the old system without utility assistance. If the various issues with functionality and clarity get fixed (inability to change default details or even see what they cover, inability to see more than 6 assigned details on a dwarf, lack of labor-relevant icons for custom details) and we get overview pages for combat skills paralleling labor it will be better than Dwarf Therapist for checking stats, organizing labor, and distributing migrants. The "top skill" when selecting new squad members is helpful but it's not nearly as good as being able to cross-reference labor and combat skills without spending fifteen minute looking at individual dwarfs one by one and trying to remember the names of the ones you want to enlist.
I'm not saying that it's not on the right track or that it will not be better once it's more refined and fleshed out, but pretending that it's already perfect and trying to belittle people who don't play along isn't helpful.
3. It's set up that way because most skills literally do not matter at all and people shouldn't have to assign labor to 150 dwarves for their fortress to function at a basic level
I completely agree and can't wait for it to be fully functional, but right now I spend as much time swapping details around as I would clicking cells in DT, with an overall loss in data visibility. I'd rather have an ugly compact micromanaging interface with all the information I need than a pretty top-level but heavily layered interface with about a third of the information I need visible at any one time.