It’s an extraordinary feature that is only intended for optimization of edge cases. Making the feature verbose and somewhat ugly to use seems like an intentional choice. This way if a beginner comes across this “confusing/weird looking” code they can look up the attribute and see what it does, whereas a more convenient/native syntax would be less recognizable and noticeable. This is similar to the idea that you should make ugly APIs ugly to use (to avoid giving users a false sense of security).

Fully agree, it is an hack without any reason for being one.