Bad default values is one of those things almost exclusive to FOSS unfortunately. I don’t know if this is finally changing for 2.8, but historically the devs. just didn’t care whether a default was bad or not.
Though I know in one recent case, the default distance value in the bump node in Cycles was actually changed from the good quality normal-map like value of 0.1 to the crappy value of 1.0. This is speculation, but apparently people would find it familiar if bumpmaps by default produce worse results than normal maps like in other apps. 
That said, 2.8 is still going to be a major improvement across the board for Blender, as more and more possible headaches for users are eliminated.