Thank you for writing this article. I'm a DevOps Engineer and spend most of my time with Terraform and Kubernetes. K8s yaml is simple clean config, and Helm turns it into an obfuscated monkey pile. If I need to use a Helm chart, I use helm template which outputs the yaml to a file. Typically I do this in a Makefile. Then I use Kustomize to modify it for my application. Kustomize has lowered my stress level from when I used Helm substantially. Helm might be fine if you don't know [and don't want to know] K8s and use it as a package manager, but the second you want to modify the config with something that isn't in the chart, like adding taints and tolerations, pod disruption budgets, pod priorities, etc, you have a nightmare. Helm literally turns something simple into something complicated. It's like trying to code with a welding helmet on.
Thank you for the encouraging words :)
I typically do the same thing when there's only Helm chart available. There's also Kustomize plugin to inflate Helm charts . I'm still hesitant to use it though because I find it much easier to just maintain generated templates as a native kustomize since they're not a black box anymore.