> Perhaps I can summarise his argument ('tho he's welcome to tell me I
> misrepresent him!) as "Let's make mutability more explicit, so that only
> things we have requested mutability for can be mutated, to reduce the
> chances of unexpected accidental mutation"?

We already have that.  Mutators have an exclamation point in their name.

I think that /is/ a misrepresentation of his argument.  A better one
would be "let's make it really inconvenient for programmers to use
mutation so that we can push them toward what we, the Real Experts,
have decided is the One Right Way to program."

I'm in the middle of reading a book about the battle between Robert Moses
and Jane Jacobs about city planning in New York.  Moses, too, Knew Better
how people should live their lives, and so he built huge master plans,
mostly involving bulldozing people's houses to put in highway onramps.
Jacobs wanted to listen to the people who actually lived in the
neighborhoods and do planning to help them meet their own goals.  An
eerie resonance to the current debate.

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