This, x100.
When Scala 3.0 is released, I look forward to a long period of syntactic stability, and a significant period of time where the only changes to the language are backward compatible. Ideally, all of 3.x.
Updating tools and books and videos is a herculean undertaking. And we don’t want to do that right after Scala 3.0 is released. Whereas, any last minute changes to the language right now may understandably upset those looking forward to Scala 3, but as virtually no production code has been shipped on Scala 3 and tooling is still in varying states of disarray (very little works fully on Scala 3), it has comparatively little commercial impact.
Others equally well-informed may come to different conclusions, but my own subjective opinion is that now is the time to change syntax, if it’s going to change at all for the foreseeable future.
As for the proposed import syntax, I think it’s a notable improvement, though I’m not that concerned one way or the other.