Pah, I always code my websites in machine code, sometimes pure binary /s

It is important to note that with WordPress, you have the ability to control every aspect of the content displayed on your site. You can control every line of code that gets generated to the page. Not knowing the tools doesn’t make the tool bad.

If red items have a heavy impact, why load them first? Probably a simple, if opinionated / maybe evidence based, reason but there’s no documentation I can see to back it up.

There’s also no indication of any actual speed or other beneficial differential estimates, if there are any. I guess WebPageTest would do that job though?

Sometimes, as we all know, simply swapping the order of head elements can break sites … minorly or majorly. Would be great to see some more documentation before tweaking.

Nonetheless thanks to the devs for their efforts. Could be a great little tool if it’s a little bit more documented.

This mindset will hold you back.
The way you put it, I understand that even if I buy a house, it it won’t be mine because I’m not a engineer who knows how all the structure or how the electricity runs around the house…
You might want to control all of your software code in a “programmer” point of view, but as you said, we are talking about professional web developers, those who need to make decisions regarding the architecture of the application/software envisioned by your client (or even youself).
Depending in how fast a project/business needs to be launched in the market, you just can’t be thinking about building something from the ground up, your client will reach for the one who can deliver both good and fast (and in times, just fast) products, you need to reach for reliable (battle-tested software) and already available tools that provide the necessary functions your client needs.
Of course, there are Web applications that require squeezing all performance available in a web browser/client computer and you need to understand everything that is happening during runtime, but this is not the common scenario.
I don’t like WordPress much, but you need to acknowledge the fact that this product is the easiest way to launch landing pages for at least 15 years.

Came here to say this. Couple decades into writing code, I use Nextjs so often but cannot for the life of me ignore how great WordPress is at so many things. My entire course platform runs on it.

As Chris said, it’s an abstraction layer. To add, you can customize it to your will. The plugin eco system it has is one of the best in the industry.

I take it you don’t like it?

All computing is standing on different levels of abstraction, and none of us understand and control all of it. Perhaps your choices about abstraction are different than mine, but that’s all they are.

As for lived experience, I’m a couple decades into web development, I reach for WordPress sometimes because it feels like the right tool, and it’s never let me down. I don’t see how I or anyone else should be made to feel less-than for that.