[orev]

Almost all programs treat the “Save” operation as something used with the native format, in this case XCF files. These preserve things like layers, etc. JPG and other formats are exports because after you close the file you can’t get all that stuff back when you reopen it.

[purerandomness]

Why is then opening a JPEG not an Import?

I get it, and when Photoshop changed this default, GIMP followed with changing this workflow. It used to be different in older versions of Photoshop and Gimp.

Advanced user usually know exactly what they're doing, and opening a PNG or JPEG file, changing a few pixels, and saving it, should require as few key presses as possible.

I don't want the UI to get in my way when I open->edit->save.

[hxorr]

When opening a jpg, it literally says "importing pic.jpg" when opening a jpg

[purerandomness]

Exactly. That's my point.

When saving, it simply should say "Exporting pic.jpg".

[jbrnh]

'Opening a JPEG' is creating a new image and importing the JPEG to it. ctrl-e on first use will establish the export setting. It's two clicks if you really want to overwrite the original. I think it would be very easy to accidentally and destructively overwrite the original image file if it was different, when ctrl-e is in muscle memory.

[mkl]

This is not true with common applications people are familiar with. Excel and Word will happily "save" a PDF, and it behaves like exporting and doesn't change the document being edited.

[jbrnh]

Word and Excel seems to change behavior on every release. I don't think it's something Gimp should try to chase. Gimp has save: "Save native gimp file" and export "Export an image file". It's a bit confusing to me why people find this confusing.