>>4511787I've been into this about as long as you, and despite my inexperience, I feel like certain circumstances can make the decision much easier.
I went on a two-week vacation overseas right after I got my camera. I didn't know much about lenses, but I decided it would be better to get my 24-105mm lens than to possibly make poor, uneducated decisions on primes that serve both ends. During my vacation, I took thousands of photos out of the passenger side window of our car, so being able to zoom was completely INVALUABLE when I didn't have full control of where I was positioned. Same thing with situations where I was up and down flights of stairs or shooting from upper floors or lower floors of buildings. I can see how a zoom can end up being a bad crutch that you rely on instead of positioning yourself better, but there's plenty of merit in having the ability to zoom to catch a fleeting moment you notice and wouldn't have had time to run up and shoot, or making certain angles possible at all.
That being said, I later got a 50mm which I often prefer because of the faster aperture. I thought I would hate not being able to zoom, but when you don't give yourself the choice, you make do. There are plenty of photos I would've framed differently if I had a zoom, but I worked with what I had, and they've often turned out even better. Importantly, I've got a full-frame camera, so I at least have the giant upside of having plenty of resolution to work with in post. It's nice being able to crop and fix my framing later, so I don't need to worry about it as much when I'm shooting. Even if your camera isn't full-frame, you can still relegate some of your framing to post.
For context, my preferred type of photography is broadly just "moments" that happen, not so much the type where you can plan everything out, so I think we've got some overlap.
