Neither am I. Prior to Catalina I used to modify the default locations where we could “Print to PDF”. I would remove the “Web Receipts”, etc. destinations etc to shorten the menu. That’s no longer possible.
And I found some items in User/Library that I used to be able change with symlinks. Apple is a much bigger target than they were in the past (they have reported 56 vulnerabilities since January 1).
Maybe a lot of these changes to macOS are security related.
When you attempt to view the organization using Finder, it cheats and doesn’t show you what is really happening so as to maintain the same appearance as older systems. If you look at things through Terminal you will find, for instance /System/Applications has the sealed system Applications while /Applications has the user installed applications but is actually on the Data volume, /System/Volumes/Data/Applications. In fact all the Data volume is mounted at /System/Volumes/Data. Finder shows both as though they are in the same folder.
Even more amusing is that /System/Volumes/Data looks like the root (/) directory. Because it is on the Data volume you can, for instance, do “sudo touch /System/Volumes/Data/foo” to create an empty file there, like you could do on older systems “sudo touch /foo” but now are not allowed. But you will never be able to see /System/Volumes/Data in Finder!
It appears that now if you want to have files accessible from all logins the only place you can put them is in /Users/Shared (which is actually /System/Volumes/Data/Users/Shared). I just had to face this issue when I upgraded my server and went from Sierra to Ventura. The old system had a /Shared Items/Public/ folder which is not not allowed.
I’ve read lots of hoakley’s articles at The Eclectic Light Company and, even with his decades of experience, he is bemused by the way the Mac works these days and constantly having to explain the significant changes under the covers with each major release. My understanding falls far short of his but I try to catch the general idea of what’s going on. I’m aware of some of the tricks that Apple plays to hold it all together.
Good grief, I feel this in my soul. I used to nuke my Windows 95 machines about once a month, and my 2000 machines every 2–3 months.
I’m in the same boat, being a old timer Linux nerd I kind of miss the times before Apple started performing all this trickery on the filesystem.
The risk is real and the anti malware and security tools are a small price to pay to mitigate that risk.
A couple of years ago I had to look up if there were any difference between a clean install and a migration assistant install. Because I always do a MA, and wanted to be sure if that is the “correct” way to do it.
So one day I did a bunch of different “work actions”, such as using Photoshop, mail, etc etc, while timing everything.
After that I wiped the Mac, reinstalled a fresh macOS, and after that ONLY the apps that I needed to measure the timing (ie, no extensions, plugins etc etc).
The difference was close to none!
I think that placebo, and knowing that everything is clean, have a lot to do with the “speedy” feeling. As well as you tend to gather a lot of extensions and shit that you aren’t aware of.
Almost like driving your car out of the car wash – the engine runs smoother, right? 
Of course this might not be true in all cases, especially if you have a faulty system. But I’m confident to use Migration Assistant for my clients – Apple have done a great job with that app!
/$0.02
I never run Migration Assistant between computers, so I do not translate any unwanted cruft into the new system. But once the new computer has been set-up, I never do a nuke & pave. While probably I would end up with a more cleaner system I do not expect to see big performance gains as I am usually dilligent identifying any application or service that impacts the snappiness of my computer so the only benefit would be disk space --not bad per se–.
I agree. But in my case, I was not able to get the enterprise Apps to even install. Adobe Support blamed on the fact that it was Ventura. They could not even install the previous two versions of LR, PS and Acrobat Pro on it. In my case at least time, the MBP is running smoother after the nuke and pave. a.k.a Car wash.
But the analogy should not be a car wash but instead a complete set of very lube in the car nuked and filled fresh 
Sometimes it’s a small but damaged file, often a preference file, that is the problem. If it’s a single app, that’s fairly easy to track down, but if there are multiple problem files, or one that’s part of the OS, it can be tricky. If it’s the kind of problem that, for instance, running FSCK from an external device would spot/fix, a nuke and pave will fix it.
Yes, if you can keep your old Mac around for a while, Airdrop really helps to slice and dice old data when moving to a new computer.
Between cIean installs, I keep my Mac fairly tidy. Although I like to try out new apps, I also like to get rid of unused apps. The AppDelete app finds and removes (or sometimes archives for me if I am unsure) the multitude of files that get created when an application is installed.
I usually get by with a combination of GrandPerspective and Forklift or Raycast uninstall capabilities.
Still, a point going for Nuke and Pave is that running Console usually makes me nervous to see all those error messages flying by me on my system!
Reminds me of a lot of Java programs that just print to the log rather than actually handling an exception that is thrown. I know I was guilty of this sometimes in my own programs, but usually only when I was troubleshooting an exception I really didn’t understand. 
Coincidentally this was published the other day, and provides a good overview of various methods of performing a clean install.
This is a good article by a longtime Mac enthusiast, but I want to make it clear that he is talking about Intel Macs and older ones at that. The Apple Silicon Macs do things differently and it is not at all clear to me that they would actually benefit from a clean install.