That's indeed a good point, as I too have been both culprit and victim of this issue. My general sentiment was that this is mostly about management, i.e. how to

That's indeed a good point, as I too have been both culprit and victim of this issue. My general sentiment was that this is mostly about management, i.e. how to manage complexity, and this apparent failure can make a good counterexample, but I was not careful enough to put a disclaimer that GCC may have a totally good reason to leave it as is (if it's the case, the reason is probably that only a small number of people will ever work with this language). Thank you for explicitly voicing that concern.