Iostreams aside: You're absolutely right with the trashfire.
I live in a country where the elders of the language decided that we don't format floating point numbers with a decimal point but use a decimal komma instead.
So PI is not 3.14 but 3,14 instead.
Just imagine what pain you have to go through if you want to parse a .csv file written by an application that "tried to do everything right and use locale".
I'd like to add something: It is not necessary an error for humans to play this new AI opening strategy.
If human players do the new AI move, an attack to cancel out the better fighting position is unavoidable. We've learned from AI how to attack and defend in this situation, so even human players are prepared and know what to do. So it is fair game for the two human brains again.
The player who gets out of this fight with the worse position is on a rather high disadvantage for the rest of the game.
So you can think of this new strategy as doubling the stake of the game very early on. For players who are really good at fighting and handle the complexity that will arise from this fight this strategy is a good choice.
I can try to explain for people not playing Go the most important thing that changed:
The AI popularized a move that has been known since ages, but wasn't used by strong humans much because it was considered a mistake (the early 33 invasion).
The thing with this move is: It gives you a small advantage very early in the game, but gives your opponent a superior fighting position in exchange. This fighting position was considered better. Not early on, but in later stages of the game it oughtweights the small advantage taken early.
Then came AI and it found out, given enough fighting power, it can mostly cancel that later game advantage.
So the new move is actually a good one, but only if you have very strong fighting skills. AI has this, some very strong players as well.
But for the rest of us, the pre AI strategy is often better because we can't handle the complexity.
It is common to see casual players copying the AI style and digging their own grave while doing so.
I live in a country where the elders of the language decided that we don't format floating point numbers with a decimal point but use a decimal komma instead.
So PI is not 3.14 but 3,14 instead.
Just imagine what pain you have to go through if you want to parse a .csv file written by an application that "tried to do everything right and use locale".