If you watch the linked SPJ video, I timestamped it at the moment where he explains what he means with "avoiding success at all costs", but also: if you watch a bit longer he shares the story of a GHC compiler bug where if you compiled a module on windows, and in a different directory than the current directory, and it contained a type error... it would tell you there was a type error, and then delete the source file.

And instead of people going berserk over this, all he got was some friendly emails from people who just wanted to inform him they bumped into this problem, but it's fine, they had a workaround. Because Haskell people in those days were used to Breaking changes with a capital B.

I think that's at least a little bit punk