No it's not, it's usually "What is the default gateway on this network segment because I want to plug my laptop in"

I do use ip route a fair bit - if I have a machine connected to two (or more) network segments and want to ensure traffic gets routed back the way it came

However my main criticism for "ip route" is that it's inconsistent and a change route "route"

"route" does reverse dns lookups - e.g "my.server.tld rather than "1.2.3.4", or "default" rather than "0.0.0.0"

"route -n" shows 1.2.3.4

"ip route" doesn't do reverse lookup, however it does say "default" rather than "0.0.0.0".