I'll miss lightning when it's gone if only because it was the most satisfying and secure feeling cable connection I've ever used. USB-C has some slack built into it by design but it just makes it feel lower quality.
The USB-C ports wear out badly after a couple years of use and are loose. Lightning, as you are saying, still feels good after years of daily use. The duty cycle is higher for lightning and should be used for things which are often disconnected and reconnected like mobile devices.
I've used the same USB c charging port in my phone for 2 years without any noticeable wear. I did, however, need to scrape out accumulated pocket lint with a safety pin on two occasions. Are you sure there isn't lint in the port you're basing your assertions on?
Former IT person here who deployed fleets of MacBooks with those damn dreaded USB-C ports. If you have "normal use" of the ports then you might not notice the low duty cycle but in an office where people are constantly plugging into their docks, dongles for AV equipment, Ethernet adapters for VoIP, and traveling it became a major headache. More wear than typical maybe, but certainly not abnormal.
On average, over the life of the device, every device needed to be sent to Apple to replace worn ports. Some unlucky sales people managed 2 or 3 trips to Apple. The annoying bit is that the turnaround time isn't exactly fast so we ended up provisioning the affected people new machines and then throwing the refurbs back in the rotation.
We never heard a peep from the Dells we also deployed that had a USB-C port for the dock, HDMI ports for the AV, and a dedicated port for charging. I like the idea of one port for all but they're just not strong enough.
Not the parent commenter, and I am not sure if there is lint in the port of my lightning powered devices, but I am confident that I have never had to clean it out to make it charge.
I had to clean out the lightning port on my iPhone 6 constantly, it was awful. With the XS I almost exclusively use wireless charging because of that experience.
Cannot comment regarding iPhone 6 specifically, as I had been using Android phones after iPhone 4 up until XS generation came out. It might be that Apple has upgraded the lightning port tech over all those years between iPhone 6 and XS, but that's just a guess.
The USB flavors and so many others have a little plastic tongue on the female side which I think is the source of the alignment sensitivity and fragility issues. Lightning, headphone jacks, and RJ45 have a purely concave port which I much prefer.
edit: and if there has to be a weak point it should be on the cable side, not on the port side.
For USB-C, the weak point is on the cable side. For Lightning, it's on the device side (little golden contact springs). The lightning plug feels like it's made for eternity, I must say though.
My laptop has USB-C charging and already the cable doesn't fit properly ($1,200 machine). I've tried cleaning it and blasting it with air - so annoying. Have on-site service so may have them come out to figure out what is going on.