By whom? They are useful, and as part of a query, communicate meaning. You are conflating your own uneasiness about a topic with the appropriateness of that t

By whom? They are useful, and as part of a query, communicate meaning. You are conflating your own uneasiness about a topic with the appropriateness of that topic to solve a problem. Where you get an "uneasy feeling", I found the subject to be very intuitive. Where you see it as "backwards", I see it as making perfect sense. If you want to make a higher-order abstraction, then by all means please do so. I wouldn't mind checking it out, even! But don't say that the lower-level use is "harmful". Then it just sounds like clickbait.