Yabia, I brought the info, I am not saying that Tosfos is better. In fact, Maharal criticizes the approach of teaching pilpul to young kids before they master the basic material.
this is just how these Sephardim learnt, and I think this is relatively representative. Even when learning Gemora or Halakha from Sephardi sources, I am struck with how much closer to the text and reality they typically are, addressing the core problem first, rather than looking for some outlying conditions. Generalizing, of course. And, again, this worked great before Sephardim needed to address modernity. I don’t think this straight approach learnign whole Mikra first works well when people are confronted daily with complicated issues.