I don’t understand this “microwave chef” remark, but you are right that darktable devs believe exposure compensation is a purely technical setting and should not be used “creatively”.
An audio engineer sets the audio gain during recording to maximise signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while avoiding clipping of the peaks, and defers any “creative adjustments” to the mixing/post-processing phase. Similarly, a photographer should use exposure compensation to maximine SNR while avoiding clipping the highlights, and make any creative adjustments in the darktable exposure module/tone equaliser modules during post-production. Using exposure compensation to maximise SNR in this way maximises the use of the camera sensors dynamic range, and give you the most amount of data to work with in post production.
By default, darktable will try to compensate for any technical adjustment made using exposure compensation, and set the exposure levels according to when the camera’s metering system would recommend. However, as just mentioned above, the exposure module can and should be adjusted to implement any creative decisions, and you can of course create automatic presets that will implement a different default.
Of course, the main assumption here is that you are shooting with the intention of doing raw image processing. If you intend to just shoot JPEG, then you need to make creative decisions in the camera using settings like exposure compensation, since the camera will be doing the image processing for you. In that case, darktable is not the right tool for you anyway.