By "weird syntax" I mean stuff like "patchesJson6902" or "configMapGenerator" or "patchesStrategicMerge" where you have to know what each field means and how they work.
A template is much easier to read. I had zero experience with go templating, but was able to figure out what it all meant just by looking at the templates... they still looked like kubernetes resources
As for looking at a bunch of different files, if you like having a "larger-memory-request" file, you can still do that with helm... you can use as many values files as you want, just include them in precedence order. You can have your "larger-memory-request" values file.
That just using Kustomize. There’s a difference between learning curve and frustration post learning curve. Kustomize isn’t that bad, Helm comes with far more headaches, especially if you need to do any kind of inheritance.
Keep your customizations flat and compile them to yaml+grep to find out what’s getting overridden and where.
A template is much easier to read. I had zero experience with go templating, but was able to figure out what it all meant just by looking at the templates... they still looked like kubernetes resources
As for looking at a bunch of different files, if you like having a "larger-memory-request" file, you can still do that with helm... you can use as many values files as you want, just include them in precedence order. You can have your "larger-memory-request" values file.