HTML attributes are all strings, so javascript's type coercion in general was this (doesn't just apply to ==) - a way to avoid having to do explicit conversions and make values act semantically equal without having to think about types.

A strict ban has always felt to me like we're leaving behind useful functionality.

I disagree. I worked at a protocol designer and implementor for years before people settled on the message queue as the universal abstraction. at the bottom end dumping serialized objects into tcp connections gets you most of the way. and at the top end there is so much leverage around locality, addressing, and transport that we are leaving a lot on the table.

message queues arent at all bad, but they come with additional complexity (most of it operational), and come with a set of limiting assumptions. so my frustration is that they are now the default answer for everything, and we're ignoring this lovely design space, one that becomes increasingly important when talking about scale.

GP here. I agree, git is the best example in the spirit of my comment.

Maybe the reason it wasn’t pointed out is precisely because it’s so obviously good that it’s no longer a conscious choice, and then we forget life before it. Even those of us who experienced it.

What about source files that aren't lines of text?