HN user
This is what BEM solves. You do not have class="Card big" but class="Card Card_big". And if you care about modifier conflicts you may always define a rule .Card_big.Card_small { /* whatever makes sense */ } and not rely on a random application of attributes.
That's how software stagnates and dies.
... risk opening the flood gates for people rewriting things...
This sounds like "we feel that changes are needed but we will not be able control it".
Lack of automatic memory management (garbage collector, smart pointers, ARC...).
I also use ag for years. Recently I tried to use rg and found it is even faster than ag. Few times I compared results and somehow ag skipped few files but rg found matches.
My reflexes are still to type ag but I already want to switch to rg.