It’s a hump curve with virtue signalling in the middle, like a thousand other things in life.

Noob+naive: use cat because don’t know better.

Experienced+smart ass: use shell direction to distinguish oneself from noobs.

Older+wiser: use cat again because it flows left to right, isn’t bash specific like “<file foo”, doesnt special case examples with only one file as input, and allows something other than a file as input or lifting the body of the pipeline into a function without changing the text…

…but mostly because it doesn’t make one come across as a nit picking asshole to the expensive noobs you’ve just spent months trying to hire.