I've learned to avoid software tools that proclaim they are "opinionated" which usually means it's their way or the highway.
That's what opinionated means, yes.
For example
- being able to change an encryption protocol is "configurable"
- Setting the default to be unencrypted so that the user chooses it is "unopinionated defaults".
- Setting the most modern encryption protocol by default is "opinionated defaults"
To your point, setting the default to be unencrypted reflects the opinion "this layer of the stack shouldn't be responsible for handling encryption unless the user has no other choice".
This is a valid business strategy in my experience especially for B2B enterprise SaaS, where you know your product works very well if used to solve a specific set of problems using your SaaS tool in a way that you, the vendor, prescribe.
At our company we tell prospective customers that if they don’t like the workflows we demo to them, they shouldn’t buy our product because the customers who like our product are the ones who use this workflow, and people who don’t like our product use strange workflows we don’t recommend.
I think the problem is when the customer isn’t made aware of the opinionated workflows/features/etc until after the fact.
What is a good example where software is described by its maker as opinionated and where it results in "their way or the highway"?
I'm asking because all software need defaults and no software can do anything that all users would want, so the software maker has to make choices of what they offer (i.e. reflecting the maker's opinion).
By using Black, you agree to cede control over minutiae of hand-formatting. In return, Black gives you speed, determinism, and freedom from pycodestyle nagging about formatting. You will save time and mental energy for more important matters.
Black makes code review faster by producing the smallest diffs possible. Blackened code looks the same regardless of the project you’re reading.
1. Changing a preference with a GUI editor. Only a small percentage of all defaults can be changed this way.
2. Changing a preference with "defaults write..." and hoping the change will stick the next time you upgrade the OS.
3. Change the default for one usage but it will revert the next time you do that operation. Many examples wrt how Spotlight searches work in the Finder.
4. You can't change the default at all. Example: Themes. Last time I checked there were two, and nobody can make others.
I call Pettier a compromise tool, noone is happy noone is too mad when you force it on checkin etc
I know that you can go for descriptive classnames and "@apply", but I was still miffed about a change like this in an already existing tool, with a lot of community pushback and no compromise in sight.
(Here's a relevant discussion, but keep in mind that multi-line-classes worked at some point and now just don't: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/discussions/7763)
So for prettier, it wasn't just "format your code our way or else" - which is a good approach for a formatter, see also gofmt - it was "your current set up doesn't work anymore, tough luck".
I’m 100% happy with Prettier. The trick is to not care too much about how the code looks. Consistent style trumps any choice for me.
Out of curiosity, what did you find to be something unchangeable?
No big deal but a bit annoying to have two ways of doing it.
Non-opinionated ... Opinionated ... My Way or the Highway