I'd say this is a "paper cut." It's a small issue easily worked around by the addition of an extra step, but that extra step is painful due to it's repetition. Also, I've seen it be a confusing step for many beginners once they learn to use $0 in objects, ie [f $0], [symbol $0], etc.
I'm on the side of $0 in message boxes. I don't see how this change would break anything since $0 currently resolves to 0 (I think), and I cannot imagine anyone relying on this. Is it a controversy?
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2018 21:02:39 -0700From: Miller Puckette <msp@ucsd.edu>To: Alexandre Torres Porres <porres@gmail.com>Cc: Henri Augusto Bisognini <msndohenri@hotmail.com>, pd-dev <pd-dev@lists.iem.at>Subject: Re: [PD-dev] roadmap for Pd-0.49?Message-ID: <20180904040239.GF25025@ucsd.edu>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-asciiThis one is mired in controversy. Meanwhile, you can get "$0" functionalityin a message box by preceeding it with "list prepend $0" so that $1 in themessage box is teh patch's $0 and the other $ arguments are renumbered by one.cheersMiller