[megrimlock]

The history of gamedev (in particular) eschewing C++ for years until the consensus flipped gives me hope that something similar might happen here. The strings thing may take a similar path to so many aspects of C++ -- where it took years of folks like Scott Meyers and Josuttis and Herb Sutter and Alexandrescu talking through the details and rationale before enough people grew to like the decisions C++ made. Think of how many C++ programmers had to get their head around (say) RAII -- it probably first seemed horribly odd and weird, and now it's seen as a fundamental reason why it's a great language.