That's a good way to put it. I've seen several posts like this, and the tendency is to assume a set of requirements (e.g., a generator must be stateless), then fault a scheme for not satisfying them.
The main appeal to me of a password generator is that if you give me a batteries-included scripting language, I can rebuild it from scratch in five or ten minutes--no precious vault to lose. However, if you want to use a scheme like this on purpose, you're going to make some compromises:
* The OP's dpg script has extra logic to avoid similar characters (e.g., 1 and l), presumably to enable typing, rather than pasting. This chips away at the simplicity.
* dheera mentioned his "almost stateless" passenter script, with a publicly accessible configuration file. Would he be comfortable adding an entry for pornhub.com or ashleymadison.com, I wonder?
* baobabKoodaa mentioned his baopass utility in a previous story, which decouples the master password from the generated password using a keyfile. Awfully similar to a vault.
Although I'm not going to discourage anyone from using a password generator, I've come to a similar conclusion as you: the ability to store arbitrary information in the vault is really useful--usernames, PINs, security questions, account numbers, etc.
My current tool of choice is KeePassXC with a vault in a SyncThing directory, and a keyfile local to each system. I wouldn't mind better sync support, because I do occasionally get sync conflicts, which I don't even try to resolve.
I used ONE password for most sites before using password managers. I had 5 PWs Top and I used them everywhere. They weren't particularly strong or secure.
So if someone got my Password he had access to most of my accounts anyway.
So yes that's a downside in password managers - but at least for me it is still better than my previous SOP
I actually love the deterministic idea, but in practice it does have one big downside compared to a password manager which is comprehensiveness (ie the ability to store all information for all accounts).
* Not all sites use email, and I can’t always remember my username (it’s different on different sites because of what names are already taken), so I will store username and password together within the password manager. HackerNews is a good example of this.
* You can store accounts that are shared, where you generally don’t get to choose the password. For me this includes my parents billing account for their ISP.
* Some corporate accounts block historically used passwords and require changes to the password every X days. This is not compatible without further salting the word.
* Some things have different password requirements - e.g. each bank account requires a different 6 digit pin and several layers of challenge/response questions that I will have also answered with random digits. Why banks choose to protect my account based on my mothers maiden name I don’t know, but as far as they are concerned her name iNv84%N:1. Also I can’t always change the pin - one investment account I use insists that it’s randomly generated and posted to me via snail mail! Others will choose your online banking username for you and I need to store that too - I’m looking at you HSBC with your usernames like IB9173628!)
* You can store other documents in a password manager. I have my credit card details in so I always have them anywhere I go, and my password details.
1password can handle all the above weirdness. Now granted, if someone were to get hold of my password manager... that’s a game-over situation and a really bad time. But my personal requirement is storing 100% of the information I need on all accounts rather than some of the information required on most of the sites.
Although I really like the deterministic approach, it comes with its own design compromises because there is no perfect solution in this space.