the AST version of the code is vastly superior IMHO. The knowledge about what constitutes an access modifier is already encoded in the system so it makes more sense to just call the method to test the type of node. The regexp solution may be expedient, but it's not as resilient to change -- if new access modifiers are added in the future it's very likely this code won't be updated, which will be the source of a bug.

You need to become your most intelligent critic and have the intellectual honesty to kill some of your best-loved ideas.

This proposal is deeply flawed and would have far-reaching consequences if implemented. In #31148 I proposed a strategy to address the same pain points in a correct, more generic way. Regardless of whether my approach is taken or not, async handling of promises is a core feature that simply cannot be deprecated, and we should remove the erroneous deprecation accordingly.

When Sprockets was introduced, one of the opinions that it held strongly, is that assets such as CSS and JS should be bundled together and served in one file.