Weekly discussion: unpopular opinions I keep coming back to

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.