It literally is? Changing the defaults shown in the PRAGMAs above would break backwards compatibility. SQLite is strictly semantically versioned and does not break backwards compatibility.
Their complaint was SQLite's type system was poor. You said this was the price of compatibility. And the documentation of your recommended pragmas said nothing of types. They seemed unrelated helpful advice seemingly.
New types would break forward compatibility in SQLite's terms. 3.7.0 added WAL mode was their example of a forward compatibility break.[1] 3.y.0 could add better type system mode.
New types would break forward compatibility in SQLite's terms. 3.7.0 added WAL mode was their example of a forward compatibility break.[1] 3.y.0 could add better type system mode.
[1] https://sqlite.org/formatchng.html