With big projects, the code will be read and written by hundreds of disoriented devs. Becoming big ball of mud is the main failure mode, by far. Getting a feel

With big projects, the code will be read and written by hundreds of disoriented devs. Becoming big ball of mud is the main failure mode, by far. Getting a feel which parts of the framework will get in the way requires experience with big projects. I work with Golang, so I can say that strictness, as you call it, definitely wins big. For small projects, you can use whatever you like and even change it for every new project. Who's to stop you? You say you don't care about benchmarks or strictness, who am I to judge? Caveat emptor: successful small projects tend to become big projects.