I think the complaint is about the number of screen <-> brain cycles required. "kubectl exec -it something-" <TAB> <read a list of deployment hashes, pick the first letter/number of the one you want, type it> <TAB> <read a list of pod hashes, pick the first letter/number of one, type it> <TAB> " sh".
The parent comment is saying you can use `kubectl exec -it deploy/something` instead, and it will pick a pod for you. That landed in 1.15, IIRC.
Ah, interesting. Unfortunately it works poorly with tab completion (i.e., not at all), so you still have to type the entire name of your deployment, even if there's only one in the context's namespace.
wait that's amazing -- have been waiting for this for years