Regarding the OPs opening comments, I quite strongly agree. I got interested in photorgraphy during the relatively early years of camera automation. I bought my first 35mm camera, thus my first real camera, in 1982. It was a Canon AE-1. It had just enough automation where I wanted more. So about a year later I bought a Canon A-1 and thought I'd arrived. Even though the A-1 was first released in 1978, it was still state of the art in 1983, and I was captivated by all those capabilities. But you know what, after using that camera for maybe a year or so I began to feel a growing sense of dissatisfaction and it was mostly because I felt that the advanced automation of the A-1 was preventing me from getting close enough to photography where I could begin to understand the basics better. So I decided to take a big step backward, and bought a Canon FTb -- a completely manual mechanical camera with only the meter requiring a battery.
What a revelation that ended up being. Finally I was learning Photography and I was loving it. But I wanted more of this non-automation, so I bought an original Canon F-1 and promptly fell in love. And I've had a love affair with the original Canon F-1 ever since. It does everything I need. It has no exposure compensation -- who needs it, when you understand exposure? No DX film coding -- why would I want that when I would often fudge my ASA dials back then (still do). It did take a giant-sized motor drive, which I did spring for, mostly just so I could keep my eye on the action without having to look away when I advanced the film. And all those interesting focusing screens and finder options -- what wasn't to love. Plus the original F-1 (and FTb) had mirror lock-up, which I actually would use with macro and long telephoto shots.
As the years went by, I reached out to other camera systems and slowly acquired cameras in these other systems, but my preferences were always for their manual mechanical models. Nikon F2s and FMs and Pentax KXes and LXes, etc. Each system had its strong points and they all helped me improve my skills as a photographer. As I acquired various cameras I also picked up the occasional "advanced" model -- like the Canon T90, I bought my wife an EOS Rebel so she'd have an easy-to-use camera to take pics of our young daughter and that got me started with EOS and its inevitable automation and complexities. But I found that, even with the EOS cameras I own, I figured out how to set them to manual mode and preferred using them that way. A few years ago I bought a Nikon F4, just to have one more than anything else, but when I use it, I usually set it to manual. I just don't see the need for all the little whizbangs and geegaws that modern cameras are festooned with. Not when I have a good grounding in the fundamentals of photography. Oh, maybe I'll relent on some things, like having a tight metering pattern or even a spot pattern available, and I'll admit that TTL flash is a nice convenience, but that's about as far as I feel I need to stretch things.