Growing up we had a walk in shower, the way it was setup there was no way to reach in and not get hit by cold water. Especially a short kid with short arms, you were getting a full blast cold water trying to go "out" of the shower. The tap was the push-pull type and very difficult to modulate so limiting to low pressure trickle was basically a game of russian roulette. The best I could do was hug the wall and let it only get whatever corner of my body I wanted to sacrifice to temporary hypothermia that morning.
some people have posted photos of showers in modern upscale hotels, walk-in showers that have a hole through the glass for you to stand safe & warm & dry outside, reach through the hole from the outside to turn on the water.
This just seems like the wrong way around... Surely it's better to build the shower so the water doesn't go near the tap? Just have the tap off to the side?
Imagine having a sink where the tap was directly underneath the spout.
Yeah that was definitely a take that forgets that valves are still a mechanical system and the knobs are where they are cause they open and close the flow of water there. I guess you could do electrical systems now but.... That's probably a bad idea for so many reasons.
Yes, the plumber would have to put a few extra bends in the pipe, drill through a couple more studs. I don't see that as being a big deal. It's a pretty common thing to see taps that are not directly in line with the shower head.
My friends house had a little spout near the floor in his stand up shower, so you could run the water and test the temperature with your toe. When it was good you pulled the stopper like in a bath and it came out of the shower head.
This would honestly be a reasonable enough excuse on why the OP was set in his ways from something like this. Once you're conditioned to something it takes a hold on you. How often does a person really question a habit they learned at a really early age?