Defaults matter a lot. Just because something is possible doesnt mean it is likely to happen.
Are most people going to enable asan, run their programs through valgrind extensively, or just do the easy thing and not do any of that?
This is also why neovim is being actively developed and successful and vim is slowly decaying. The path of least resistance is the path most well travelled.
Any project with a decent test coverage and CI can easily set up an ASAN / Valgrind run for their tests. I know I've had this on the last few C++ codebases I've worked with.
Are most people going to enable asan, run their programs through valgrind extensively, or just do the easy thing and not do any of that?
This is also why neovim is being actively developed and successful and vim is slowly decaying. The path of least resistance is the path most well travelled.