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by ignoramous 1037 days ago
> In the very best case, the defaults are so good that an empty configuration does what most people want.

More generally, defaults (including, default examples), matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25646180

Especially for software which is mod-able, malleable, composable, configurable... defaults have a disproportionate impact on UX, DevEx etc. A reason why TLS 1.3 got rid of a laundry list of options, or why WireGuard is simply a joy to work with (as opposed to IPsec / OpenVPN), or why middleboxes on the Internet are a big hurdle to protocol upgrades, or how NewCloud companies like Cloudflare, Replit, Flyio, and Vercel have devex beyond what the Big 3 can muster up.

> Think ripgrep ... welp, I can't really think of many good examples.

Apple has got this spot on, across decades. Their products "just work", as they say so in their own marketing.

> Browsers need extensions

Now you see why Chrome is defaulting to Manifest v3 ;)