If the user is prompted to give permission for the application to have access to this information then at least you know which ones are doing it and can avoid using them if you are worried about it.
I used to hear this all the time back in the early 2000's. It's far from a new idea.
The version I heard (or at least the one which stuck in my head) was "your job is not to write code, your job is to solve problems".
edit:
I wish this was more mentioned more frequently these days. I see junior developers very focused on superficial aspects of code and specific "cool" frameworks these days. Often I find myself asking "what problem does this solve? What are the trade-offs with your approach? etc." and it's just crickets. I think we have made a lot of progress with modern frameworks, tools, etc. but I also think there is something from the "old days" of programming which we have lost, which I think we should have fought a bit more to keep.
Ruby and Rails anre amazing. I love Rails and recommend it for most small to medium sized projects. What I find frustrating though is the constant hum of people using “Ruby is slow” as the excuse for every problem they have. Everyone I know using Rails is in the process of convincing everyone that they have outgrown its capabilities and need to move onto something “more mature”. I also see a lot of people using Rails but replacing its components with others. A. If part of what makes Rails powerful is that it comes with pretty much everything you need, replacing them without good reason (there usually isn’t one) erodes the value you get from Rails.
It’s a race to create an AI good enough to solve the e-waste problem before the e-waste problem becomes such a large problem that it prevents AI advancement.