Daily thread: first impressions vs the alternatives [v1]

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks.