I think the safer generalization to make is that the Gnome 3 project leaders prefer it that way.

Debian just doesn’t tweak it, likely in favor of increased stability.

As the other user also pointed out, it’s not Debian but rather the Gnomeproject that is by default pushing this workflow and look-and-feel style. If you try Fedora or Archlinux for instance, you will also find the same Gnome desktop (with a different wallpaper). That said, dash-to-dock is one of the most famous and installed extensions, so this means that many users prefer that workflow, but many also apparently just use gnome without a dock. When I was using Gnome, just for reference, I had dash-to-dock, but most of the times when I needed to launch an application I would just use the shortcut to open the search menu (which coming from KDE I remapped to alt + space)

Yep, that’s how plain vanilla Gnome is. You’d get pretty much the same experience if you installed Fedora or any other distro that just ships it as-is.

Ubuntu’s version comes with a lot of patches and custom extensions to make it work similar to how Unity did, and give a reasonable desktop experience.

Plain Gnome as imagined by the developers:

• Doesn’t have a panel for running applications, you’re supposed to use the overview thing or Alt-Tab to navigate your open apps/windows
• Doesn’t have desktop icons. Wallpaper only.
• Only shows the dock when in overview mode.
• No tray icons. Apps are supposed to have their window open at all times and you’re expected to stash it on a virtual desktop if you want it out of your way. No closing out Discord in the background, it must stay open. So does your music player and everything else.

In fact, according to the Gnome vision, you’re not supposed to even theme your apps to your liking, you’re supposed to stick with the default Adwaita theme. I think Ubuntu patches that too so their Yaru theme works properly.

That’s why people make fun of Gnome.

I’m enjoying this interactive presentation of the fact that Gnome’s default interaction design is so uh… “opinionated” it appears broken out of the box to anyone who has used a computer in the last 35+ years.

I think Debian’s default gnome install includes the packages to give you a session option in your greeter (login screen) for “Gnome Classic” that will give you a configuration that is …less… weird but still gnome.

You’ll need to load a bunch of gnome extensions (the classic session basically does some of that automatically) to try to make gnome bend to your preferred workflow, try to contort yourself to whatever workflow the gnome folks have currently decided is the one true way, or pick a different desktop environment like KDE or xfce that is more conventional and/or less opinionated.

…Personally, I’ve mostly been using KDE lately, but I have an easier time with ricer tiling WMs than stock gnome these days, they’ve made some weird choices.