I don't necessarily disagree with you. But it depends on what you want, just like I said.
Ponder the results of Cartier-Bresson printed by Sid Kaplan. 35mm Tri-X of a generation of films that are much grainier than what we use today. The prints are not GOOD, they are breathtakingly GORGEOUS. Have you seen the huge prints from Salgado and his 35mm work using 400 and 3200 film? They too are absolutely GORGEOUS. Grain is supposed to be there. We're shooting film.
What I'm talking about is LEARNING. I made the mistake of learning by seeking 'magical' differences by using different films and developers. I used everything and anything under the sky. What resulted was that I learned how to make GOOD prints from hugely inconsistent negatives. I spent seven unguided years doing this thinking I knew something.
Then somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said 'you're making a mess'. Just try to work with one film and one developer for a while and see what results. So I did, because I am an open minded person. I overexposed film on purpose, I underexposed film. I shot in nasty broad daylight lighting with harsh shadows, and I shot in glowing beautiful overcast light. I shot at night, in the morning, indoors, outdoors. I over-developed the film on purpose and underdeveloped it too. Just to see what happened, over and over again. Eventually I learned how to react to many different lighting scenarios. I learned how to process the film accordingly. It isn't at all about standardizing - it is about optimizing, adapting, and making the most out of each situation and make GREAT negatives, and not just decent ones.
The person that tapped me on the shoulder I am forever grateful to. I had seen a lot of prints in my days, working at a museum with a very large photography collection, and I thought that I could get to that level if I just kept doing my thing, but after a couple of years you start to wonder what’s missing. In retrospect I had no idea how far technique could carry me in terms of print quality. Now I know. And my prints are by a long shot better than they have ever been, and the reason for that is that I am, if I may say so, a fair bit better printer than I was, but now I have great negatives to work with also. I know this, because when I print negatives from the past it always takes me a lot of paper to get to where I want to go with it, but with newer negatives things fall into place a lot quicker. Because the negs are treated to suit my printing materials, the paper and developer combination and its characteristics. And I’m not resting on any laurels. I still feel there is room for improvement, ever seeking better ways of trying to carry my intent of the photograph to the viewer, to try to make them feel what I felt.
Because I re-learned with one single emulsion, and one single developer, I have now, three years into it, adopted one more film. I like to be prepared in case the first one becomes discontinued. I am now in a place where I have learned to fully exploit both films to get what I want. One of them is a 100-speed film, and the other is a 400-speed. Grain? I don't care, because when the rest of the print is good enough, like having good values from shadow to highlight, great contrast and sharpness, I don't even notice the grain anymore, or the lack of it.
Worry about making great photographs first with good content. Worry about composition and getting the picture across to the viewer. Worry about seeing the light and how to treat it so that your prints look great. Worry about technique and learn how to exploit a small set of materials to the limit and beyond. Then worry about adding more films to worry about things like grain.
I have a challenge for you: Look at many of the great photographers out there still shooting film. How many of them use more than one film? Look at someone like Bill Schwab - Tri-X and HC-110 for decades. Would you look at his pictures and say - gosh you should shoot TMax 100 because your prints are too grainy? Look at Paula Chamlee – she and her husband bought a walk-in freezer full of the last run of Kodak Super-XX so that they wouldn’t have to change. ABC pyro for everything and make contact prints on Azo or Lodima, using a single developer – Amidol.
I'm not in this to make GOOD prints. I am in it to make FANTASTIC prints, from all aspects of the photographic process. The limitations in this aspiration will not lie in our materials, but rather in our knowledge of how to use them to get what we want. How are you ever going to learn to get to the very bottom of all those different films and developers, if you switch between a lot of them?
Everybody has favorites.