Either way, I think bad default folders is better than bad default security practices. Most package manager forces you to use sudo to run them as root, and I think that's much much worse in terms of security practices and encourages the wrong behaviors and potentially allowing build/install scripts to wreck havoc on your system. (Note that /opt/homebrew is not world writable as you suggested. It's only writable by the user)

Instead, Homebrew prefers to run in a user account, default to yours. If you have a multi-user computer, you can install Homebrew to a local user folder to have isolation and not using a global location like /opt/homebrew, or you can make a special Homebrew user account (rather than using root), which is what the docs suggest (https://docs.brew.sh/FAQ#why-does-homebrew-say-sudo-is-bad).

I don't think the current solution is perfect, but I do think the motivation to prevent usage of sudo is correct in terms of security. In fact, I would argue that the other package managers that use sudo are taking the easy way out (albeit insecure).

The goal posts definitely seem to be moving over the course of this thread?