It’s even worse because not only is there more than one way, each way gets added and then deprecated, or worse there’s some big caveat like not being compatible

It’s even worse because not only is there more than one way, each way gets added and then deprecated, or worse there’s some big caveat like not being compatible with references or with values. This leads to all kinds of insane syntax that won’t make sense without a very careful reading. And because everything changes meaning depending on where it is, what functions were last called, and what it is being applied to there is no way to be sure of the effect of a function or a piece of syntax without having a deep amount of context from careful reading of the code before the call site. Context sensitivity sounds great in principle but leads to a lot of unpredictability in practice.