> I never had any of the non-problems problems which ripgrep is trying to solve

That's OK. Not everyone has the same set of problems, and not every tool that is built must be used by everybody. I document pretty clearly what ripgrep does in the README, so if it doesn't target your use cases, then obviously you just don't need to use it. But also, just as obviously, it should be clear that plenty of other people do fit into the use cases that ripgrep targets. It turns out that a lot of people work on big code bases, and as a result, running the default grep command can be quite slow compared to something that is just a little bit smarter. It gets super annoying to always remember to type out the right `--include` commands to grep. I know, because I did it for ten years before I built ripgrep. I mean, this is the same premise that drives other tools like `git grep`, ack and ag. ripgrep isn't alone here.

See also: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/FAQ.md#pos...

> And personally I would consider an antipattern to skip the gitignore contents per default.

Then use

    alias rg="rg -uuu"

and you'll never have to worry about that specific anti-pattern ever again. ;-)