What are the competing standards to XDG? Stick everything in $HOME? Stick everything in $HOME/.config?

Those 2 aren't standards and aren't helpful.

Yes, sticking everything into `$HOME/.toolname` is what most cross-platform software is doing, and I imagine that's just fine for the vast majority of users.

Short, memorable passwords like one's birthday or favourite pet's name are "just fine for the vast majority of users". It's a meaningless metric of quality - or more to the point - it isn't a metric of quality.

Weak passwords have securities downside.

I struggle to see what the issue is with ~/.programName ?

1. It doesn't separate program's config, data, and cache; so it is impossible to backup excluding cache, impossible to reset your config without data-loss.

2. It assumes home is infinite, if you are running out of space in home you can't move program files to other partitions. E.G. Flatpack hardcodes its apps data in `~/.var` so if you have a small/almost-full home partition you simply can't install certain Flatpacks.

First and foremost, that I don't get to decide where things go on my own machine, and that if I do regardless, because developers didn't follow a simple standard and instead decided to hardcode things that shouldn't be hardcoded - which is just about the first thing every dev is taught not to do - things will break.

You may not find it important but is it an issue or not?

Your lack of imagination is not a compelling argument.

Except it isn't most cross-plaform software doing that. It might be most of the cross-platform software you use but IME it's mostly it's corporate software plus a few holdouts too stubborn to add two lines to the code reading their config file.