It's better in some ways (order-of-magnitude reductions in pause times were cited) but worse in other ways (higher peak memory usage). That the higher peak memory usage was catastrophic for some users only became apparent through post-release feedback.

Really? You've never reverted a positive change because it contained a regression only discovered after release?

It's this sort of stuff that leaves me scratching my head why people like Python so much. I hear them say they prefer the syntax and personally I feel like that's such a small part of the holistic experience of working with any particular language. It's one of the reasons why I gave up on C++ years ago for .NET, the whole system of tooling in .NET has never left me feeling like I was pigeonholed into doing things in stupid, self-flagelating ways. Why should I use a language like C++ that doesn't provide a standard set of package management and build tools? Why should I use a language like Python that feels like it's being designed by amateurs?

I felt like the tooling in Racket, CLisp, and Java were similarly pragmatic and not either religiously devoted to some concept of "backwards compatibility" that I seriously doubt most people actually need, or "ease of use" that actually proves itself to be easy when you consider the not-happy-path of the beginner tutorials. Racket, I didn't continue just because the library ecosystem isn't mature enough to keep up with the latest in databases and other 3rd party services. Java I quit largely because of Oracle and some 2010s problems with stagnation. CLisp mostly because it was too hard to socialize. But never because I thought the core language and tooling were holding me back.