[JoshTriplett]

> The counterarguments all involve nonstandard contracts. Therefore, thinking that using “=“ will have some magical side-effect is absolutely never expected by default.

That sounds like a recipe for having problems every time you encounter a nonstandard contract. Are you actually saying you willfully decide never to account for the possibility, or are you conflating "ought not to be" with "isn't"?

If I'm programming in a language that has the possibility of properties, it's absolutely a potential expectation at any time. Which is one reason I don't enjoy programming in such languages as much.

To give a comparable example: if I'm coding in C, "this function might actually be a macro" is always a possibility to be on guard against, if you do anything that could care about the difference (e.g. passing the function's name as a function pointer).