What have you found challenging to cook? I moved from gas to glass top electric and had heard horror stories (had always had gas stoves before) but despite regularly cooking meals for the family I haven’t run into anything problematic beyond worrying my cast iron will scratch the glass top (no issues so far).
I had a lot of trouble cooking on a halogen electic -- pulse on, pulse off -- stove and all those problems went away when I got an induction. For years I thought I was a terrible cook but it was always that terrible electric cooktop. The only thing that cooktop did well was boil water.
The most frustating thing I tried to cook was good, crispy hashbrowns. Believe me, I tried everything and the results were always soggy, greasy horror. When I switched to induction (and replaced all my non-ferrous pans) the results were perfect everytime.
Induction seems to be the holy grail of cooking: electric (so it's clean and doesn't use fossil fuel from Russia), and highly controllable and repeatable. Everything else should just be banned, gas because it's polluting and problematic, and other types of electric because they just suck.
There are a few reasons people prefer gas:
- heat output
- heat distribution
- responsiveness to inputs
- durability/ease of cleaning
I'm in the same boat and have found glass top actually produces more heat than a previous gas range. This isn't surprising at all numerically but people seem to automatically assume gas ranges are hotter even though you can literally just compare the numbers. Distribution is roughly the same or even better - gas tends to heat in a ring (where the flames are) whereas my glass top electric heats the entire circle. This is true even for wok cooking (although I have a flat-bottomed wok).
Responsiveness to inputs is a real problem, there's a significant lag to temperature changes. Although, this is already something every cook has to deal with - different pans heat at different rates, and the amount of food in the pan is a factor too. You kind of just learn to account for it.
Surprisingly the last point has been the worst for me - I'm always worried about putting pans down softly, and still have a few scratches. Cleaning is really easy for stuff that will wipe off, and near impossible for everything else. Spills with sugar/starch content need to be cleaned immediately or they'll be burned in forever. You can sort of scrape stuff off with a razor blade but you risk scratching the surface. I'm not sure why, given that glass ought to be harder than metal, but it happens nonetheless. With older coil/gas stoves you had drip pans or could line underneath the hob with foil, and just throw the foil away when it got dirty.
The temp change part makes sense and I can see how figuring out how to account for that across multiple pans could be challenging for folks that haven’t worked with it before.
Cleaning I’ve had no scratches using bar keepers friends to make a paste and scrape off, ymmv.
Came across this mother Jones article [1] on the success of the gas branding to promote gas stoves which was fascinating.
Induction ranges are almost all really bad except at the very high end. I have one that will intermittently scorch a 4-inch diameter annulus in the center of the pan while leaving everything else untouched. The only thing it's practical for is boiling water, which is enough of a benefit for me to justify its existence.
My dad is a professional cook (retired, but used to own a restaurant in France). He only uses induction. While he did not get the cheapest one, he did not take the high end either.
One thing to consider is that quality of the pans and pots. Nowadays while they are all induction friendly, some provide a better heat distribution than other.
If asking my dad, the main benefit he sees is the control.
Modern induction stoves are much better (even better than gas, I hear, though I haven't used them extensively yet.)