> but I assure you that if you actually used it, you would have found what you suggested even uglier.

It's not fair to make that judgment for someone, particularly because people using Rust at the time weren't complaining much about how ugly it was. At the time it was questioned whether the change was desirable and that very blog post braces for opposition under Wait, doesn’t this make it hard to know what your program does?

Fwiw, that's one instance where unnecessary information/features were removed I would rather had been preserved.