It's tragic people feel that way. They're actually very well-designed, but if you don't like operator soup then no amount of design will convince you otherwise. Which is fine and why the Lens package is able to be imported operator-free.

My problem with the operators is they screw up function composition. `over`, `set`, `view`, `firstOf`, `toListOf` compose normally with the datastructure on the right. The operators flip this and therefore require the dumb `&`.

It's kind of like diagrams with `#`. I don't accept the argument that if it's a lens or a diagram, our meager brains can't comprehend right-to-left composition anymore.

Worst of all is when there isn't a non-infix alternative, effectively forcing you to use the soup. Case in point: `%=`.

The non-infix names are a bit more conservative, yes, but it's easy to define your own of course. And to even argue back about $ and & is pretty bike-sheddy. It's just a choice that was made.