I am curious.
Is the seemingly often reported troublesome behavior of subscripted variables perhaps only an unexpected consequence of a design decision of convenience?
Or are there deep fundamental theoretical reasons that might be explained why it is just not possible for subscribed variables to behave like "ordinary" variables?
If it was just a decision of convenience, since giving people subscripts seems to compel them to use them and this behavior has for years caused confusion and unexpected problems, would there be any chance this design decision might be reconsidered and perhaps this problem could just go away? Would it break anything not relatively easily repaired if this were changed?
This is perhaps similar to the various "Form"s, which people seem compelled to use and are then confused when functions and operators do not then operate on the contained data exactly as if the Form were not present.
I vaguely remember something about a "principle of least surprise" from long long ago.
