I remember a lot of KDE hate up until Gnome 3, which was controversial, to say the least. It mirrored old-school Mac hate, with a lot of invalid arguments parroted by people who never took time to learn it (or more to the point, to unlearn what they came from).
I’ve swapped between Gnome and KDE a bunch of times, and it hasn’t really made a difference to me in many years. There was a time when running apps built for one on the other was a painful experience either way. Nowadays my DE choice doesn’t really influence my application choices.