Earlier quoted context omitted.
Docker is certainly not marketed that way & even the majority of tutorials / if not all on Digital ocean or similar sites don't misguide you into doing this. It is clearly not marketed as "usable without reading docs" and even though people using it as a tool to deploy prebuilt software without learning its configuration, this doesn't apply to the docker commands itself. If https://www.portainer.io/ would do this imp…
Honestly, I am not sure if you're right with the marketing but the docker way of “doing everything needed in a tightly coupled way” does reek of a tool that is designed primarily for ease of use. Heck, this “issue” (which, I don’t agree is an issue) only exists so that people don't have to do an additional step. Its “ease of use” which violates the principle of least surprise most commonly.
Docker does not compete with LXD which just runs containers like VMs, but with distrobuilder + LXD + including the init.yml in the deploy process.