[chabska]

I can accept this for a hobby project language that unexpectedly blew up in popularity. Go is not that language. Zig's developer also had grandiose plans for his project language, based on his writings, so I had expected more care put into its design.

[Mawr]

You underestimate the difficulty of designing a language by at least an order of magnitude.

You've basically arbitrarily focused on a particular flawed design decision of a language while ignoring a thousand others that they may well have gotten right.

It's not possible to just sit down and get everything 100% right up front. The language design space has too much both depth and breadth to it.

[hitekker]

If he had left that coupling at 1.0, I’d agree that would be careless. But he didn’t; that one expedient choice was reversed before mass adoption.

IMHO, you may be confusing “care” for legibility. The creator(s) made a choice that you disagree with and that you may not understand. They also haven’t justified or explained their choice to you. That illegibility might feel careless, even a little mean, but I reckon their focus was on figuring out the language, not seeking widespread approval.