There's a lot of hype around stuff people don't understand. A manual transmission is easy to understand - it's like a clock that doesn't tell time.

Automatic transmissions have never sat well with gearheads because they're computers that use hydraulic fluid rather than electrons (not that they'd understand electrons). This is a big ball of Boolean logic:

Paddle shifters really became possible once the fluid logic was augmented/supplanted by electronic logic. There's nothing wrong with planetary gears. Torque converters aren't great but the same people who have no problems whatsoever with viscous couplings are hateful of torque converters without understanding they're exactly the same.

CVTs got a bad rap early on because the fluid logic necessary to make them work tended to burn power. They also are harder to make robust enough to handle real power. But yes, the ideal internal combustion engined car has a motor that makes peak efficiency at a very narrow band coupled with a CVT that's perfectly efficient. They're not more popular because it's still easier to make a motor with a broad power band than a CVT with great efficiency and the ability to take a lot of torque. That's changing, though. By the time everything is electric the CVTs will probably kick ass. ;-)