What I’m against is the oversimplification that if we only had ipv6 from the start, that the internet would have turned out very different and we’d be directly connecting to each other through direct unsolicited connections or something.
No, there are a lot of reasons direct unsolicited peer to peer communication are not a good expectation to have on the modern internet. NAT makes it tough, yes, but so does security (you’re gonna want to firewall your network at the gateway anyway, even in v6), changing addresses, mobility, etc.
For instance, even in my network at home, I don’t think using my real GUA prefix on each device is a great idea. Because the prefix changes, I have to use ULA for any static configs (dns, etc), which means the GUA address is this extra address I don’t use, and it only complicates things. So I’m moving toward ULA-only with NAT66, which I think is a more sane choice. I get the benefits of lots of addresses, which is great, but instead of my firewall simply allowing traffic to my public stuff, I just NAT a public IP to each public thing I want.
I don't think any reasonable engineer expects that that end would ever be the case, even if it was one of the stated original "dreams" of IPv6.
Then imagine my frustration when that'e the exact argument people are giving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43072844
Like, I come up with these scenarios as a strawman to illustrate that direct client-to-client connections aren't going to work, and people come and say "actually it totally could work! We have PCP, and DDNS! Cell towers have mobile IP's too so you're only going to change IP addresses 3 times on your drive to your friend's house! And his router will also support PCP so it could have totally worked this way!"
I literally came up with the example to sound as crazy as possible, and people still say "Yup, that's exactly how things could have worked if we had IPv6. Now look at how stupid ninkendo is for not knowing about PCP, the moron~"
Like imagine if steve jobs came on stage in 2011 to introduce FaceTime, and said "You can make video calls to other people on iPhones, it's great! But you have to know their IP address. Or subscribe to a DDNS service. Make sure to use really low TTL's on your DNS records in case you roam to a different network. Oh and you have to have a router which supports PCP. Every router you connect to must support it." Even in a world where IPv6 was everywhere, that would be insane. (Well, other commenters seem to think that's exactly how phones ought to work? Maybe I'm the crazy one?)