> p4 predates most of the VCSes we consider "modern"

p4 also significantly predates VCSes we consider obsolete. p4 is almost a decade older than SVN.

> Scripting p4 is a nightmare

This is why I wish more command line tools were split into a library that does most of the work and a cli module for purely user interaction. Parsing stdout seems so unnecessary and could be avoided if a program could simply import a library.

I’ll add some more

- The P4 cpp api was apparently designed before any modern Cpp std lib was available. And is at best archaic, and stringly to use.

- P4 encoding support is pain in the ass to configure. And ensist on adding or removing bom to files.