Strawman--nobody said that. All I suggest is that if you wish to accomplish a particular task, then read the manual at that point, and find relevant ways to invoke the command.
The options I've memorized over the years are the ones I've used the most often, and this inertia can lead to ignorance, unless I periodically revisit the manual page to see what else can be done.
Every IT/CS instructor will tell you that your source of truth is the vendor's documentation. Don't waste your time Googling Stackexchange when the manual pages are available right on the system, on a website, or however. The manual pages are written by the developers and tech writers to specifically tell you how to use these commands.
You can either "cat for clarity" for the rest of your career, or you can learn new methods like shell redirects, "tee(1)", "exec <file; while read var; do cmd; done". I wouldn't be surprised if people start their careers thinking that "cat" is just for starting up a pipeline. Other students may be taught that "cat" is an elementary way to just put file contents on their terminal screen, and then they'll subsequently learn how "more(1)" is superior in this regard.
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
