The language began as something of a gem and each release seems to be muddying it up. Another commenter already mentioned the string argument to make a data str

The language began as something of a gem and each release seems to be muddying it up. Another commenter already mentioned the string argument to make a data structure. It also looks like built-in methods on these objects are also strings. The metadata and annotation facilities seem unclear. Sometimes they change the appearance and behavior of the object, sometimes they don’t. Some functions now are curried by default. The choice probably makes symbolic programming and pattern matching trickier since it breeds a variety of representations of the same concept. (Pattern matching and rewriting strongly favor canonicalization.) All and all, it’s beginning to look like the core Wolfram Language is beginning to tremble under its own complexity. I can’t imagine coping with buggy code at all in this framework.