I've been writing Haskell professionally full-time for five years now and in my opinion no other language even comes close. We've even rewritten all our Javasc

I've been writing Haskell professionally full-time for five years now and in my opinion no other language even comes close. We've even rewritten all our Javascript in Haskell because maintaining a significant body of Javascript was becoming too much of a burden. So no, I don't think it's overblown at all. The record problem is not nearly as much of a problem as this discussion makes it seem. Discussions about this problem are invariably going to make it seem like a bigger issue than it is. It's too early to tell, but if this solution really does solve the problem as well as it says, then it will definitely be nice to have, but I don't actually think about this problem very often in day to day work. And lenses have already adequately addressed a significant portion of those pain points. EDIT: Oh, another point. The fact that this post exists at all is a testimony to the power and flexibility of Haskell. You don't see these "issues" being discussed in other languages because they (other than lisps) don't give you the power to play around with things this close to the language level. So in most other languages the discussion could never happen. And if it did, it would be someone going off and writing a new language.