After a week of driving manual you will never stall the engine.

When people learn to drive it's usually the panic rather than technique that makes people stall, anyway

But you can't skip gears like you can in a manual, which matters more when you have 10 speeds reaching mass market.

I hate using manual mode in an automatic. I love driving stick. The fun in driving stick isn't from being able to pick gears.

What does skipping gears get you that quick sequential shifts don't?

My feeling is the opposite. Paddle shifters are the closest I'll get to driving an F1 car, and I've put a decent amount of time in with a racing wheel and pedals and racing sims and that's where I get all of my muscle memory for my Golf GTI.

I can still skip from 2-6 on a freeway onramp or 6-4 for passing faster than 8/10 speeds can go 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.

There's no point revving out all my gears in real world driving, I just want to reach the speed limit as fast as possible then go into overdrive. DCTs are very fast at switching into what they think is your next gear. They're quite slow at switching if you want to switch more gears.

2-6? That never happens. You'd probably blow your engine before you did it. Not many people hitting 50 mph in 2nd gear.

Tell that to Porsche who thinks 85mph is a reasonable top end for 2nd gear. Even a Miata will hit ~60 in 2nd.

Given the low end for 6th is around 35mph, 2-6 is plenty doable without going anywhere near redline.

My Subaru WRX would beg to differ... 60 Mph in second gear, then shift to 6th to do highway traffic, just fine.

For me it's not really about choosing the gears, per se. Yeah I can do that in an automatic, but it's hardly the same. With a manual you get coordination between foot, hand, brain, and you are one with the car. For an enthusiast it matters.