My experience of teaching beginners is that having everything visible and logically arranged on the front panel helps guide them towards making appropriate use of the features. The problem with "hidden" options is you don't know they are there until after you've looked for them.
True, but that is no different for a DSO. What you call "hidden menu" (which btw aren't really hidden on most scopes, it's often more of a case of 'can't be bothered to learn how to use my tool properly') is usually only required if you need advanced functionality.
As for manuals, well the acronym "RTFM" is there for a good reason T'was ever thus. As for DWIM techniques (sorry, "task dependent help"), to some extent they are necessary as a result of having by hidden controls
"RTFM" applies to any tool, even an analog scope (where else would you learn about it's limitations?).
And I remember things back old times, like when an unnamed company overestimated the capabilities of the trigger in some of their analog scopes. It wasn't all good back then.
Strawman argument! T'was ever thus!
Not really. You seem to think that vendors only got creative with their specifications when DSOs came along (and your signature supports that impression) but that doesn't conform with reality, which is that the specs of your average big brand DSO are as reliable as they were for analog scopes.
On the other side, analog scopes teach beginners practices of which many are no longer appropriate when using a proper modern DSO. I believe it is much better they learn how to handle a modern tool properly right from the start instead of learning outdated methods on a museum piece. I mean, we don't teach students of medicine how to properly set bloodsuckers or do a bloodletting any more, do we?
Neither do we teach them to drive cars using a Bugatti Veyron (I think that's the latest hot car). No, we teach drivers on gutless new clunkers.
I'm sorry but like in most cases where someone comes up with a car analogy this one is silly, too. It doesn't matter if you drive a Yugo or a Veyron, all cars have a steering wheel and the same set of basic controls (throttle, brake, clutch for stick shifts, blinker, gear/transmission lever). Both cars work exactly the same (the energy from a piston combustion engine goes to the transmission and from there to the wheels). A Veyron might be of much higher performance than a Yugo but essentially you drive it the same, especially on public roads. In short: if you can drive a shitty Yugo perfectly then you can drive a Veyron, too. No need to re-learn driving.
If it has to be about cars, a better analogy would be teaching a driving student using horse and buggy.
That's not necessarily true with analog scopes and DSOs. The operating principles (direct analog display vs sample and digital storage) are completely different, which means there are different things to consider when using a DSO than if an analog scope was used. This also means that treating a DSO like an analog scope often won't cut it and give poor/false results. Some basic controls are the same on analog and digital scopes but that's about it, and as soon as you want to have a closer look at a complex signal your analog scope leaves you with maybe some primitive CRT storage mode and (if you're lucky) some basic cursors with readouts while a good DSO offers you a full suite of signal analysis, maths, decoding etc. So unlike a driver that moves from a Yugo to a Veyron, even an EE who has many years or decades of experience in using analog scopes will have to learn quite a bit of new stuff when moving to a DSO, and much more if it's one of the more advanced ones (although the hardest part is giving up old habits from the analog scope days).
When I train apprentices and students I want to prepare them to be able to make the best use of tools they will be working with when designing the Next Greatest Thing(tm), not to become curator in a T&M museum. I can see that an analog scope can still be useful for many simpler tasks, and there's nothing wrong with that. But in this day and age it no longer should be the entry for someone who wants to learn using an oscilloscope properly.