> Stopping compilation with an error for every unused import & variable is particularly annoying

I think the worst part of that decision is I've never seen a bug arise from unused imports and variables (even in languages with ubiquitous importing side-effects like Python, imports and import ordering can cause issues but usually you need the import anyway, you can't just nuke it).

Meanwhile variable shadowing / overwriting or unused return values which do cause issues are perfectly fine by the compiler.