An inconsistent and variable default would be significantly, unfathomably, worse than a "bad" default.
And I don’t even have to imagine it, because there’s an example right in the python builtins: open in text mode will use… whatever garbage `locale.getpreferredencoding()` returns. Fantastic way to create hard to reproduce bugs.
That's because using non-binary mode is bad, not because variable defaults are bad.
> An inconsistent and variable default would be significantly, unfathomably, worse than a "bad" default.
Even if you're right on that, I will still say that defaulting to no compression is significantly worse than going "error missing library" for people that have a partial install.
And I don’t even have to imagine it, because there’s an example right in the python builtins: open in text mode will use… whatever garbage `locale.getpreferredencoding()` returns. Fantastic way to create hard to reproduce bugs.