I am working on my first board with 8.X. (It has been a while since I designed a board.)
One thing I THINK I notice…is improved default net naming. If I remember correctly, previous versions of KiCad used to assign names such as “R27 pin 1”. While the reference designation is of some use, the pin numbers of resistors and nonpolar capacitors are sort of meaningless to me as I do not display those pin numbers on the schematic. I found myself manually assigning a lot of net labels so I would better know what net I was routing at the moment.
Now, the default net names seem to be assigned based on transistor and IC pin names which are much more meaningful. This is really nice and is a timesaver.
I do not remember ever complaining about the earlier arrangement, but perhaps others felt the same way I did…
Thank you, Devs!