Reminder that the latest update vs the alternatives [v2]

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.

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.