Dot syntax isn't so evil. Even the example of setting a property on a view's frame seems slightly contrived in that the compiler will give an error. It doesn't silently fail or do undefined things. The primary confusion there is, when you're new, wondering what in the world the strange error message means - but that's something you eventually get over as you learn more about the language and how it works.

Also, dot syntax is how you reference properties when you're doing KVC and KVO, so it wasn't without precedent.