When we get evaluation boards that doesn't have straps to make it easy to deactivate on-board features, I think we just must make our voices heard by contacting the company and complain.

For a big company that can buy multiple boards, it doesn't matter too much if you have to pop a couple of 0E resistors. But popping one too much may take a bit of extra time, quickly eating into the cost savings of the board.

And without straps, they are totally unsuitable for school projects, unless each student gets a board of their own that they get to keep.

Before the first prototypes are available, I often create a separate board with some requierd peripherials, and then connect it using ribbon cables. But that is obviously only possible if the evaluation board has the connectors, or a large enough prototyping area for adding connectors.

When the complexity of the firmware increases, it is important to be able to start programming and testing while waiting for the real hardware to arrive. Having tested low-level code will also help when the program doesn't work on the prototype. Within nothing tested, it can be hard to know if there is a design issue, a bad solder joint or a firmware bug.