I'll start by saying that this opinion is aimed at primarily street oriented cars. Not necessarily stock, but not particularly radical either. What it seems the OP has.

Personally, I have not seen a situation where dialing in the proper amount of initial advance in the distributor would not work and using manifold vacuum would. I will never say never on this kind of stuff, but I have sure re-curved a bunch of distributors over the years and then moved the vacuum back to being ported. Every one of those situations has been that the one who put the vacuum source to the manifold did not attempt (or maybe know how) to properly curve the distributor.

There is nothing wrong with using manifold vacuum, but it is usually (not always but usually) a band-aid covering up an improper distributor curve. Same as throwing more or an earlier accel pump shot to cover up a poorly chosen, late opening power valve.

In that context, I agree that there are similarities in the topics.