No, the machine has to serve the human, not the other way ’round. The software/UI has to do what the users want and if the users want a crop tool, give it to them! Especially since a “crop/trim canvas” function would be a tremendous time saver as opposed to going into document setup.
For example: I have three small objects on a large canvas (no artboard) and I want to export these three objects as one image — crop/trim canvas (better yet with a shortcut) and hitting Ctrl/Cmd-X would be a thousand times faster than selecting all objects to look at the transform panel and find out the dimensions, then unselecting them, going into document options, entering the dimensions, setting the scaling behavior, and then exporting the image. Likewise, using the export persona for such a simple operation is overkill because you still have to perform multiple steps just for a quick export.
The workflow problem is currently prevalent. That you can’t imagine the use of a cropping function doesn’t mean that everybody else is at fault.
