well why is it good? why not just assume the boilerplate as the default and require the user to override it if they want to do something fancy?

it's just busywork to always need to write the same stuff, and it also makes the code less readable and many people look at all that boilerplate and nope the fuck out.

This is why python is so good for getting people to realize that programming isn't magic, you just write the equivalent of one short sentence and BAM text in the terminal, no need to import the basic ability to print text which is so incredibly inane.