Guidelines for Proplist Usage

Based on collective wisdom accumulated over decades of Erlang development:

1. Use proplists for function options unless the options are numerous (>20) or performance-critical
2. Always provide default values using either get_value/3 or the append-defaults pattern
3. Document expected options clearly, especially boolean shorthands
4. Consider maps for new APIs but don’t feel compelled to break compatibility
5. Use normalization when accepting user input that might use variant keys
6. Validate required options early in your function, not deep in the logic
7. Don’t nest proplists deeply—if you find yourself doing get_value on a get_value result, you probably want records or maps
8. Remember that atoms as booleans must be lowercase—'True and 'true are different atoms