But Homebrew didn't used to be that way when I started using it. And with some fairly small changes it could go a really long way to supporting more users. TBH if I had the time, I would roll up my sleeves and do it myself.

The whole reason that I used Homebrew to begin with in 2014 was to help mitigate these problems.

I think there has been a cultural shift away from being more useful for a larger base of users, to being optimal and "clean".

The least it could do is confirm before it makes irreversible and sometimes breaking changes to your system. I don't see any good reason to delete your distfiles after potentially installing an incompatible package. And compared to most Linux based package managers, Homebrew makes big changes to its interface frequently, which makes it a headache to keep up with. Just look at how much casks have changed in the last two years.

Anyway, when I felt I could no longer rely on Homebrew, that was the last straw for me dumping macOS.