You make a great point. I really shouldn’t contribute to the boogeyman-ification of port forwarding.
I certainly agree there is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous with port forwarding in and of itself. It’s like saying a hammer is bad. Not true in the slightest! A newbie swinging it around like there’s no tomorrow might smack their fingers a few times, but that’s no fault of hammer :)
Port forwarding is a tool, and is great/necessary for many jobs. For my use case I love that Wireguard offers a great alternative that: completes my goal, forces the use of keys, and makes it easy to do so.