In my experience with... it's maybe 20? ... embedded boards, junk during boot breaks the boot flow for about half of them. And attaching quickly after target powerup is very often the crux of the exercise, to get to the bootloader fast enough before it moves on, but also you don't have the shifters (or Vref pin) in place to be able to attach beforehand...
Since I once had the case where junk on the line (from a wiggly connection) caused Magic Sysrq requests I'm fully on your side. No junk tolerated for potential hot plug connections.