> you have to accurately remember the past

From personal experience I rarely reach for event-designators beyond the current viewport of the terminal. Referring to a command beyond that is, as you very much correctly point out, an easy way to get behavior you don't want. However, if you are always referring to things that are near-memory or even still directly visible in your terminal buffer — the gun-to-foot ratio becomes manageable. I use many (many) of these daily without issues, but it does require some additional discipline.

Also, and this I find important to note, `!!` and `!$` sit outside of the memory argument as they always refer to the last command and last-command's last-argument respectively — as such there shouldn't be any recall related problems (unless you are context switching and come back to a shell in a state you don't remember).

A common occurrence when my posts acquire attention is that I retroactively realize that some things could have been conveyed better; I read every comment and yours is a blessing in disguise to improve future writing.

Thanks for reading the article, and thanks for indirectly making me a better writer!