Anyone else concerned that this whole thing is being justified by this survey[1], in which pipes were "the fourth most requested feature". They neglect to mention that the fifth most requested feature (<1% fewer votes than pipes) was "functions", making it pretty clear that we're probing the "people who have no clue what they're talking about" sector and we probably shouldn't be adding any new syntax to the language based on their input.

Furthermore only 7% of respondents answered that question at all, so the real takeaway is: 0.7% of survey said "add pipes" and 93% said "please don't add anything it's fine as is just leave it alone we don't need to be the next Python". This isn't convincing data in the slightest.

As for their actual example... why change it at all? I think any reasonably adept JS programmer can look at their representative "console.log" example and immediately tell whats going on. Heck, it's using the same semantics as every other C language, so really basically any programmer can look at it and immediately tell whats going on. Contrast to their "proposition" where suddenly everyone in the world (minus the Hack folks I guess) needs to take time to learn what the new weird looking symbols mean.

1: https://2020.stateofjs.com/en-US/opinions/#missing_from_js