In reply to Josh Pollock.

Of course, those taking the contrary position to Matt are also making the same number of assumptions:

1) That continuing to iterate in core is better than iterating in a plugin.

2) That the features of the API that are proposed for 4.5 merge are not going to pose a problem for core.

So that's a tie.

However, making these assumptions explicit won't be much use if both sides seek to address them by speculating on the level of future usage. Where are the hard data?

Oddly, the only data discussed so far were identified by Mark K and Timothy Jacobs in a short debate on a previous post on WP Tavern.

In other words, I am not impressed by either side so far.