I don't see the value in being contrarian solely for the sake of making the world less clear.

Until that sentence, I had thought that my meditation might have met with your approval. At some level at least.

I am not contrarian for that reason. Indeed, I am not deliberately contrarian for any reason. If I am contrarian, and in this place and environment I certainly seem to be, it's not because I set out to be so.

I try, to the best of my ability, to make informed, logical, concious decisions about things, rather than just adopt the prevailing ethos. I do this in every sphere of life. And when I express my opinions, I try to explain the reasoning and logic that led to my decision. And I only express those opinions in response to direct questions asking for alternative views. Unlike some. And then, I explain my disatisfaction with ABC, and leave the questioner to make their own decision.

On the example that I think concerns you most, the Test::* suite exists and works (for many). But, if I suggested string eval for use in production code, I would be panned. But it is the basis of much of Test::*. If I suggested stealing both STDIN and STDERR from all your production programs, you'd be up in arms. If I suggested you verify the contents of your HTML files, by hard coding comparisons for every line, in sequence, you'd laugh me out of court. Yet for some modules, the test suite is fully a third of the code produced.

There are alternatives. The assert & trace macros in Smart::Comments] for example. Easily enabled. Combine with diff for automation.

As for making the world less clear. So many analogies spring to mind here, but I settle for one: The world would be more clear if there was just one god and everyone had to believe in it. Or none, and nobody was allowed to believe in one. Or many, and everybody had to believe in them all. In some places, at some times, all of those have been legislated. Would you advocate that? To make the world more clear.