Underrated this approach worth the hype?

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.