This is shortsighted. There is place for prescriptive as well as descriptive components. The huge issue with components that don't give you much choice is that

This is shortsighted. There is place for prescriptive as well as descriptive components. The huge issue with components that don't give you much choice is that they do not compose well. You find two components clash on some decision and neither has any mechanism to resolve the issue. This is frequently the case with "frameworks", which tend to want to control all aspects of your application. Does this make your life simpler? Sure, but only if your application is exactly or very closely to what the author of the framework envisioned. On the other hand there are "tools/utilities". These can fit same role/functionality as "frameworks", but they are not intrusive, don't tell you how to put your application together. Rather, they give you tools with assumption you will know how to use them. Does this make your life simpler? SURE If you have non-standard application and you know what you are doing you want to compose your application from tools that do not demand too much from the structure of application, dependencies, etc. If you are novice developer it might be temporarily useful to use more prescriptive tools. You don't know how to put stuff together so you might just as well learn how others do it. If you are advanced you will know what to use. If I know I will be working on a very standard application I might just as well use something that takes care of it all for me.