See that's not what happened here. It wasn't that the API had a footgun (I'll leave out "is this API actually good"). It was that someone decided that changing

See that's not what happened here. It wasn't that the API had a footgun (I'll leave out "is this API actually good"). It was that someone decided that changing core API behaviour after that library had shipped was acceptable - and it isn't. That's why shipping a new API requires a lot of time investment in the design of the API: once an API is shipped you can't just change the behavior dramatically.