Understanding homebrew 'no-sudo' philosophy and questioning FAQ

They say to put /usr/local/bin/ at the top of your $PATH so that homebrewed programs are found before system ones. For example, if you use the homebrew version of python, the system one in /usr/bin/python will get called before /usr/local/bin/python unless /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin in your $PATH, even though /usr/local/bin is already in your $PATH.

Whoah, who said the installed programs have root permissions? sudo is used to give you permission to write to protected directories so you can install stuff into system folders. The root permissions are not magically inherited by the programs you install. They are installed like all programs with whatever permissions they are supposed to have. Installing with sudo will not elevate the permissions of the installed files.

As for the $PATH, if homebrew is installed into /usr/local/bin and that is already in your $PATH then you simply don't need to do anything.