I somehow agree with OP. Important: somehow.
Electrum is the swiss knife of Bitcoin light wallets. It is recommended by basically everybody. But it can be a pain for the newbies; I remember it was confusing even for some older users with the changes introduced in 4.0.

Electrum could use some predefined modes. No changes in functionality at all, just (UI/visibility) settings.
A newbie mode should have only the super basic tabs and buttons, a medium one would have more.. and the advanced users... can enable all they want in the settings.
It could be a bit of work in the UI and finetuning the modes. And it clearly means a lot more settings to be made up, but the result may worth it.