People should not forget that UNIX was an informal experiment, not a plan for what should dominate the computing world 40 years later. When writing informally-

People should not forget that UNIX was an informal experiment, not a plan for what should dominate the computing world 40 years later. When writing informally-experimental software, you should have a bias toward doing things differently from the mainstream, so that you can put new ideas to the test. There are plenty of options for people who don't want to write new code using NUL-terminated strings. They can make their own decision. There's no reason to blame a 40-year-old decision for errors today.