A strong opinion does not have to be about what tech stack to use for best results, that depends on the goal. It could also be a few notches above the actual tech. My strongest opinion would be about the usability of what I'm creating, not just what the user wants but to figure out what they really want. Sometimes they are so blind to the actual problem that the solution they want isn't quite fixing the problem in the most efficient way. Especially if they don't know enough about the tech to know other ways of fixing the workflow to their liking.

This was similar to my reaction to that question, and how I'd respond to it in the interview (with curiosity around what they're trying to get out of it). It's not that I don't have strong opinions, but they are necessarily couched in context. Strong opinions lacking in context are a sign of a lack of experience. Sometimes unit tests are a must, and in other cases they are an absolute waste of time. Sometimes microservices are the right call, and others they are an unnecessary complexity. The more experience in this field I get, the more gray and amorphous my opinions become, and "it depends" is the default, if not interesting, answer.

i agree with that. as a young person i had a number of strong opinions. i am still kicking myself for insisting that a mailinglist server written in C would be better than one in python, based on the language alone. my opinion was just blind prejudice despite not being strong in C, and always having preferred languages like pike, python or javascript.

basically most strong opinions are based on lack of knowledge. one that i have now for example is that kubernetes is over engineered for most problems. it's based on discussions here on HN and not any actual knowledge or experience with it.

as a consequence i have learned to be very careful with strongly expressing opinions, because it can be difficult to back them up, especially when i face someone more knowledgeable in that space.