[...]It'd seem consensus is emerging that indeed the devs are idiots (should you wish to more politely define that as "strategically myopic" or whatever other phrase). It'd seem the consensus also is emerging that indeed the way forward is,
As far I've read (which includes this whole thread of course), consensus is emerging that the devs are doing a good to very good job overall. You are the only one calling them idiots in this thread, which is wrong, insensitive, and counter-productive. Most of your comments let me think you have no idea what quality management is in software engineering, and what "0 defect" means in this field. You might wonder why Amazon cloud can be unreachable during a whole, why Gmail can lose mails and be unable to restore them from backups, and why NASA shuttles crash.
I would advise you to stop calling people names because they are not delivering that free unicorn to you.
Then you need to learn to read.
And re "heroics": there were no heroics involved here. The in extremis forcing of a downgrade is not heroic. People doing it are not cool.
It is idiocy, and the people doing it were idiots. Yes, they had no choice. Guess why they had no choice, and guess who puts themselves in the situation of having no choice.
Let me make this perfectly clear: the current hard fork is the death of Bitcoin unless the consensus reached here (ie, no more bitcoin client releases until spec, first release code-cleaning release) is implemented exactly.
This is not up for discussion, it is a fact.
Or you need to learn to read. I'm not sure that sentence brings us anywhere.
Same thing with "This is not up for discussion, it is a fact". This sentence only serves to prove your lack of open-mindedness.
I still disagree with you about the devs being idiots, this mistake was human, and mistakes DO happen, whatever the amount of ressources and good will you throw at development.