Yeah, well, you know that's just like uh, your opinion man.
I also prefer to SPP, it's a lot more satisfying. And in theory you can SPP practically any lock, whereas raking is more hit and miss. I'd never suggest that raking wasn't a legitimate technique though. It has its place.
There are some locks I can SPP easily but I can't rake them open for the life of me, so it's understandable to think "why rake when SPP is more reliable". Thing is though, plenty of locks that SPP easily will rake open even faster. And then there are others that'll rake open almost effortlessly that you just can't seem to SPP at all. I'll give you an example.
A couple of weeks back, a friend of mine locked himself out of his bedroom. Asec rim cylinder, Y77 backset... I could've slipped it, but I didn't have any mica with me at the time. So I set to work with the good ol' short hook. For those who don't know, asec have a pretty nasty keyway and are mostly spools, 4 + 1 regular I think. Despite this they're generally a pretty easy pick, no different to the likes of iseo or mila. Mostly the keyway that's annoying. But anyway, naturally you're gonna get the odd one that gives you stick. And this was one of them. Typical.
I went to work the same way as I always do but there was very little in the way of feedback. I could get a couple of sets but it wasn't dropping into false and it just didn't feel right, so my initial thought was that I was oversetting something. I tried dropping pins and going over them again, tried different tensioners and placements, tried a DCAP hook, but it was just going around in circles. After a few minutes I was thinking crap, I'm gonna have to makeshift some mica to get in and it's gonna take forever cos this jamb is really tight... so I figured I'd try and rake it a little to see if I could luck it open or at least force a false set. Raked it a little and nothing happened, then as a last ditch effort I raised the pins right the way up and jiggled them a bit with quite a lot of tension, thinking I could maybe reverse pick them while raking simultaeneously if that makes sense... felt a nice bit of give, a little too nice for a false. And whaddaya know... that was it open.
So I went in, put the snib on and retrieved the key. All high cuts. That's why I wasn't getting any feedback... because of all the spools and the fact that the cylinder was pretty stiff, it wasn't actually dropping into false and binding any further. I would've had to lift the pins very high to get any binding, but it just didn't feel right at the time so I didn't think to try it. It's not very often you come across a cylinder pinned up like that so it really threw me for a loop. So anyway, if I had've tried raking first it would've been a 5 second job instead of a 5 minute one. And no head scratching. Not that he was in a hurry or anything, but still.
There's no place for ego on the job. Open is open. And in some situations, raking is the
only way that some locks will open (at least in any reasonable amount of time). I have an ASSA cylinder here that I can't SPP to save my life but it rakes open pretty easily. Most of the time they don't have bittings forgiving enough to be raked, but it's nice when they do. And even if you picked a lot of ASSA locks you'd still spend a fair amount of time trying to figure them out, especially with someone peering over your shoulder the whole time... so if there's any chance you can pop it quickly with a bit of raking, I'd take it as a blessing. Don't knock it, you might not need to rake very often but one day you'll come across a situation where a bit of experience with raking really saves your bacon.
