I think you're bringing up some great points! I'm really excited for the opportunities improving the language will bring to give leverage to community issues. That said, I think a lot of community issues are also just about education.

String choice is a particular point for me. I think it's great that we have three string types as they each have their own tradeoffs. That said, I don't think the particular choice of Stringy type made is often driven by the tradeoffs as much as by convenience or partial information.

I really think it often does boil down to the Prelude design. Solving the momentum issues there is a huge problem.