Everything would still be bloated, it’s just that the people doing the bloating point to that quote as though it’s defending their position.

What kills me is that a lot of the stuff just isn’t that hard. You need a data structure that you’ll later check membership of? Use a set. Might a list / array be more front-of-mind? Yes. But if you don’t need it, why? Is it noticeably slower? Not really. Is it objectively the correct answer? No, and it costs you essentially nothing, so just use the correct one.