I can't speak for games or something like that, but I've been using MS Office since the mid 90s, and they kept the menus well into 2000 and beyond. I never had a problem finding anything. But then at some point after allowing menus if you wanted them, they totally dispensed with them and made the ribbon mandatory across all Office apps.

It's been fifteen goddamn years and I -STILL- can't find shit. Like, I've used mail merge maybe three times in my life, but even today I could find it rapidly in the old menu system: it was grouped next to the labels over to the right somewhere but before Help, take me 10, 15 seconds tops to find it.

Today, it's "ms word [version] mail merge location" in a search or dragging out the customize ribbon tool and simply skimming though All Commands to see if I find it there first. No fucking clue where it's hidden now, because I hardly ever use it, and the menus are not organized in intuitive, regular layouts: some buttons perform a single task, some open a submenu, others open a full window of further options.

Menus are a simple, elegant and time effective way of organizing a complex GUI: intuitive, hidden until you need them, no excess use of real estate, can be flipped through rapidly if you're not familiar with the app, fairly standard for all users, and easy to walk someone through remotely. The ribbon has none of that, IMO.

. . . if there’s a better way to make frequently used buttons accessible.

In an app like Word, put frequently used buttons on the old format bar and put the menus back above them; make the menus fixed but the toolbars customizable to a small degree, and now you have the best of all worlds, IMO.

I had no issues with the style before ribbons.

Best way I can put it is by comparing the CAD programs I use. Go look up (PC not Mac) screenshots of Autocad2023 versus Rhino7. I prefer Rhino7, and it's everything to do with how tools are organized, nothing to do with the massive color differences, or command prompt location. Of course, both are highly customizable.

I also really like Photoshop's layout, and Blender in theory, bit not in practice (idk why, maybe just too many things overall everywhere).

I concede the issue here is that I use programs that are very visual based, so when I switch to primarily text programs, the lack of real-estate is very frustrating. I doubt that I am alone in this however, the overall population is admittedly increasingly visual.

Control key shortcuts.