This is somewhat related to the "robustness principle" that was guiding internet development in the early days. It wasn't about programming languages, but about

This is somewhat related to the "robustness principle" that was guiding internet development in the early days. It wasn't about programming languages, but about protocol data, but the issue is similar. Yet it turned out that doing that introduces a lot of subtle security issues. Today many people came to the conclusion that the robustness principle was a mistake: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-05.html https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-protocol-maintenan...