There's very few debates where I feel good about upstream moderating downstream's access to capabilities because they're afraid of uses. Postgres notably refus

There's very few debates where I feel good about upstream moderating downstream's access to capabilities because they're afraid of uses. Postgres notably refuses to implement query hints because people might do wrong => forks like OrioleDB emerge. EcmaScript promises refuse to allow synchronous access because ___ => we end up with endless userland dual sync/async constructs such as AbortSignal. In general, I think we need more people to take inspiration from perl. "Perl, the first post-modern programming langauge"[1] is an old old old write-up, but I think it still holds very true that we generally ought enable. Even when we do set down guidelines, I feel like there should usually be ways to go outside the boundaries. To me, it's a huge feature & logical that there be capabilities in Java to peek into the private fields of a class- maybe not all code should have access to this, but this kind of deep access to a system is still, to me, highly desireable. It makes me sad to see languages like JS, once fore-runners in first-class everything, dynamic programming, accrue the trappings of a constrained, restricted, denying language: private fields (with no workarounds), annotations/decorators but load-time compiled away/invisible. Systems that expose what they are & let us monkey around are just better, cooler, have more potential. Imagining nice pleasant happy well groomed langauges & systems is, to me, the ultimate premature optimziation: favoring some internal idea of a plan & binding everyone to it is a horrible mistake, one that often prevents criticism by simply denying the other party's their option, the chance to be explored. [1] http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html