> So there's a controversial feature added in C2y, named loops, that has spawned many a vociferous argument. (...it) is just a popularity contest

Thankfully cryptography design isn't programming language design, what we have here neither is nor should be a debate or contest over popularity, and the costs of being wrong are enormously different between the two, so you can just sleep easy knowing that your experience doesn't extrapolate to the situation at hand.