Themes and plugins (like our) use $wpdb->prepare(). It would be great to get an early heads-up, so we know about upcoming API changes and we can release our updates ahead of time.

As it is, WordPress 4.8.3 fixes a security problem and breaks a good number of sites. Of course, we're releasing an update ASAP for that change.

For end-users, it doesn't help knowing who's right and who's wrong and what all the underlying good reasons are. Their sites broke and they're frustrated.

It's our common responsibility to make sure that sites are secure AND don't break. If we could get advanced warnings about upcoming changes, we will stay up all night to adapt our plugins ahead of these changes, to prevent sites from breaking.