“if a program uses a configuration file (or several), it should have an obvious command line way to find out where it expects to find that configuration file.”
A sysadmin should not have to read a whole man page or query the package manager to find one file. XDG makes it worse, because environment variables move the location per user. Even Go’s toolchain hides the answer deep in its help. It is one line in --help, and almost nobody writes it.