I set up a whole startup using Kustomize. It was great, except almost no-one used the inheritance feature except me - they all copy-pasted everything. Then the company grew and hired some dedicated devops people, who immediately started switching to Helm. I threw up my hands and went back to focusing on software development.

I’ve done some NGO-related work and in that context, they talk about “appropriate technology” - technology that’s suited to the local population, among other things. I’ve started to see tools like Helm and languages like Go as appropriate technology for many teams, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to switch to a pedal-powered water pump in my own house.

I also prefer Kustomize over Helm. That said, their removal of vars was a boneheaded decision without a working replacement.

https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/issues/4049