The String to Text thing is actually a great idea.
The record system extensions remain a bad idea. Back in the day I proposed a language change that adds a parallel record system since the 'record' keyword is not taken (or wasn't at the time).
Laziness is less of a problem than expected, at least for web backend. But when it does come up it is v hard to track down.
Compile times will never become faster and the tooling will always be a problem, they should set that expectation from jump.