Ultimately, the best course of action is to just live with it.
I disagree. That's why the suggestions forum exist.

OpenGL is imperfect, and trying to make it perfect is only going to make the imperfections worse.
I don't buy it that openGL is imperfect. I would say it's less perfect for games maybe...and by suggesting more we can make it less "imperfect."

Oh, and let's not forget a simple, practical fact: your proposal is nothing the ARB hasn't heard dozens of times before. Go ahead; search this forum. It's been suggested over and over since GLSL was adopted. It hasn't happened in almost 10 years. The arguments for it haven't changed a bit.
Again?

And yet, it still hasn't been done. It took almost a decade to get separate shaders and program binaries, and those are also things people asked for even before GL 2.0. So I wouldn't hold my breath.
Again?