I think it is better in the sense that interfaces developed with the tidy evaluation tools in rlang can be using interactively, and can safely be programmed against. I've attempted to describe the dangers of (e.g.) base::subset() at https://adv-r.hadley.nz/evaluation.html#base-subset
OTOH I agree that most of these "dangers" are not encountered in every day interactive use. But they make the functions terminal in the sense that it's ill advised to wrap with(), subset() etc inside another function.