[Gudahtt]

I think I understand the case you're making - that generic solutions are generally preferable to special-case solutions. That's a sensible enough position to take.

But it's pretty unreasonable to call it _bad design_ in a vacuum, as if there are no obstacles to a more generic design. The reason something like do-notation wasn't chosen is that nobody figured out a way to implement it without major trade-offs. So the alternative you're championing here either isn't possible within the constraints of the language, or the solution hasn't been discovered yet. The `?` operator was a pragmatic compromise.

I'm with you 100% that it is a shortcoming, but you can't really call it bad design given the reality of the situation. Compromises aren't bad design.