With TouchBar, you cannot change volume quickly without looking at the keyboard, spotlight gets activated all the time as you lay your hands around the keyboard -- yes, it's really that awful for many folk.
A lot of people use MacBook Pros for software development and Terminal access, and F1-F12 keys are often mapped to specific functions, from console software in Terminal, to cross-platform web browsers, to VirtualBox and such. It's not that difficult to remember which Fn key stands for which functions if you're a professional, it's easier to document Fn than the special case of a pictogram that's only available on select hardware, and Fn is 100% backwards-compatible, cross-platform and supported through Terminal OSS applications, plus much faster to use if you're a professional.
If you're a non-professional user who's never used F1-F12? Yes, sure, the TouchBar might be distractingly enjoyable to look at.
As a non-mac user (and also not a professional in your terms), one of my biggest gripes about keyboards is that full 5250-style 122+ key keyboards (with f1-f24, without a fun/modifier key) are either old (massive & won't fit nicely on my desktop) or expensive ($100+). Neither one has analog volume control, which I use frequently, and windows doesn't make it easy to map them, though the new windows powertoys feature might help. The color is also annoying (older are all beige, newer tend to have beige keys, which looks even weirder), but that can be fixed.
A lot of people use MacBook Pros for software development and Terminal access, and F1-F12 keys are often mapped to specific functions, from console software in Terminal, to cross-platform web browsers, to VirtualBox and such. It's not that difficult to remember which Fn key stands for which functions if you're a professional, it's easier to document Fn than the special case of a pictogram that's only available on select hardware, and Fn is 100% backwards-compatible, cross-platform and supported through Terminal OSS applications, plus much faster to use if you're a professional.
If you're a non-professional user who's never used F1-F12? Yes, sure, the TouchBar might be distractingly enjoyable to look at.