I personally think working oneself up the ranks from simple, more hands on aircraft makes the more comperent and experienced pilot.
However, having talked to certification staff and test pilots a few years ago, manufacturers are developing their modern aircraft in such a way, that the product is designed so that it can take a maximum amount of bad technique, bad decisions and beatings of the two "monkeys" sitting up in front, to make up and prevent hull loss at any cost by developing technolgy to counteract human error. This allowed low experienced pilots to slip through and low cost MPL concepts for airliners to function, as the machine and SOP would compensate for short-comings.
This seemed to work very well with the one or other exception. And now the 737 Max came along with a failed system, that was an intended further step in automation development - so that they did not even consider training the pilots for the system. A catastrophic failure.
So it remains pretty philosophical - but probably serves best to have both worlds: competent pilots in state of the art engineered aircraft.
In Europe it has become rare because GA is being politically strangled out of existence by every means possible and a narrowbody airliner is usually the only piece of equipment availiable for a 200hr MPL pilot to start on, with only a few exotic exeptions.