> I guess it really is just personal preference or maybe we mistake familiarity for ergonomics

These are mutually exclusive the way I see it, and I would argue that personal preference is the right one.

I tried learning Ableton but didn't find joy in it, I think it's because FL Studio has closer origins to the music tracker days whereas Ableton avoided that.

I would say they both offer different mental modes that are orthogonal to one another