While I understand your point, emacs is changing very specific behavior, that was intended, to do something new now. So I would say you're xkcd comment is slightly off.
No? It changes how an existing command behaves.
> This commit crippled all user interaction with Emacs registers, turning commands such as C-x r s, once smooth and frictionless, into a cumbersome and painful mess. Concretely, instead of just typing the key for the register you want to operate on, you now get a fully blown minibuffer for inserting a single key.
It's not terrible, and the mnemonic is sound. If you don't like it, perfectly valid opinion, you're just not made for emacs' default behavior.
I'm definitely not made for emacs, specially not its pinky :)