Sadly, I just learned the significant difference between pre-linking and post-linking functions in directives.

Namely, pre-linking goes from top to bottom (parent first, then child) where as post-linking goes in reverse (child first, then parent).

I believe that this default behavior is unusual and unexpected, and I believe that by default all linking functions should be pre-linking. I think that people are going to look at the HTML layout and expect the linking to behave in a manner that reflects this. I believe that people should only hook into this reverse, bottom-top linking behavior explicitly if they actually want to.

This might hopefully ease frustration others might encounter during development.