AST for read access I find relatively decent. Straightforward and not complicated. For manipulating code tho (e.g. for code gen or rewriting), yeah - absurdly

AST for read access I find relatively decent. Straightforward and not complicated. For manipulating code tho (e.g. for code gen or rewriting), yeah - absurdly unfriendly fits pretty well, and comments only kinda sorta mostly work until you actually try to produce anything polished. It kinda feels like they prioritized forward-compatibility at the cost of usability (which could be a decent decision / a fair tradeoff, but it sucks as a user trying to do stuff now).