First, I want to apologize again. I misquoted the core-devs and simplified a complex issue into an inappropriate and demeaning sound-bite. I found two previous threads on this topic; there are maybe 2-3 others that I can’t find right now.
With respect to Stefan Karpinski’s comment about not caring about users, I believe that the core-devs care very much about the user community. Indeed, Stefan personally deserves a medal for his patient and careful explanations on this discourse site! And the core-devs make huge numbers of other contributions to the user-base, including answering issues on github, arranging JuliaCon… the list is very long.
This issue is not about caring versus not caring about users; rather it is about balancing competing interests of two different groups of users. For the purpose of explanation, let me propose a straw-man “new syntax rule” (NSR): If a function g defined in an inner scope has the same name as an existing function g in an outer scope, then at least one argument of the inner g must have its type qualified (::Any is OK). Zero-argument functions are exempt.
For a power user who writes code-generation macros and other forms of introspective code (user group A), NSR would be a hindrance and an annoying speed bump.
For a Julia newbie, for a university-classroom user, and for a person prone to typos (user group B), NSR could save that person an hour or two of chasing down a “spooky-action-at-a-distance” bug caused by a typo.
My contention is that the current state of affairs in which a one-character typo can redefine an operator favors user group A too much over user group B.