I live in a time where I don't need to edit config files by hand to allow using multiple applications with the same audio output

You don't need to. It just works out of box.

after PulseAudio was released.

And after JACK. And PulseAudio development started after JACK was released.

I also don't know if resampling and the like is automatically handled when using dmix, but perhaps you can tell me that, since it sounds like you have experience with it?

Eiher by dmix or by libalsa since I never had issues with samplerate.

How about we keep a good fucking tone.

Not to offend you, just saying that reading manual is one of the best ways to get information.

However my experience is that programs all want to set those properties without a way to disable it, so in practice it doesn't really matter.

For some reason. I don't remember having such issue, but I also don't remember using same webcam in two applications for sure, but I think I used v4l2loopback "webcam" in VLC and chromium at the same time.

Another reason to use Pipewire is to enable sandboxed access to multimedia devices, for use with things like Flatpak or Snap.

Well, /dev/videoX can be forwarded to sandbox. Snap and Flatpak are not designed to be a sandboxes.

Sorry I forgot to reply. Better late than never.