When we put the recommended config up for debate we erred on the side of what's the most common / correct use case - creating minimal config for the majority with overrides for the minority.

The majority use case is for sourceType: module, so if we don't set that in our recommended settings, then the majority of recommended users would have to manually add that setting.

TBH it's the first time that I have seen a case that doesn't work with sourceType: module (I've always set it on every single project I've worked on), so my preference would be to keep it.

It's certainly up for discussion though!
If enough people feel strongly against this setting, we can remove it.

We could also export multiple configs that are "recommended", one for scripts and one for modules (or just one with the module override and one without). As it is, having one recommended config be opinionated feels a little weird (to me).

What's recommended is always going to be subjective to some degree 😄

The recommended ruleset we eventually landed on was based on two things:

1. amalgamating several existing configs from the community
2. what the TS team does within their documentation

bradzacher/eslint-plugin-typescript#144

Definitely not opposed to exporting more configs though.
I think there is real value in having a number of default configs to make adoption easier.

Hi, thanks for the responses.

yes, this is definitely subjective. My point of view is that I thought of the recommended settings as a parallel to the recommended settings from eslint itself - just a set of rules to be enabled, that most people would agree are useful, with some of the more obscure onea left out. Therefore, I was also surprised that it set the parser, but that's obviously useful for everyone using the plugin.

Anyway, I think it is without question that if it is left this way, it should be documented somewhere (maybe it is and I'm just blind...)

you're not blind - It's not documented because it's a rare case that hasn't been considered before.