I have hydraulic disc brakes on my bike, and they are the greatest thing ever! Yeah, they require maintenance, but totally worth it.

This is interesting, I recall having some of these as a kid.

I'd say the key drawback not mentioned is that, in many riding conditions (such as but not limited to riding when in close proximity to vehicles, riding in high wind, riding in proximity to severe drops or road discontinuities, riding with heavy loads, riding downhill with luggage encountering sharp bends, repositioning legs for a hard ascent, etc.) you cannot always freely alter your physical stance to apply additional pressure to the braking system (as it may upset other concerns) nor can you afford a short latency to reposition to your stronger leg before applying the brake (or a short burst of climbing on difficult terrain).

So while functional in most conditions, I'd say they are in fact objectively inferior in terms of latency and control and thus safety and utility in many realistic conditions.

What could be an improvement (and may have been made already) is a speed-gated clutch, that is to say, slow reverse is permissible but a burst above the gate speed enables braking. This could solve a minority of the issues in terms of control at the cost of complexity.

The coaster brake also can be prone to locking up the wheels and causing the tire to skid. For kids this is an advantage, since they enjoy putting bikes into a sideways skid.

Damn well it was! I remember we used to play tag on bikes. But when we switched to hand brakes, it became impossible, as you need a free hand and speed control at the same time.

The disadvantages of coaster brakes are that the pedals cannot be adjusted while standing over the bicycle frame.

Another disadvantage not mentioned in the post is that with coaster brakes the pedals can get trapped by the kickstand. I don't remember the details because this was a long time ago, but I accidentally found myself in a situation where I couldn't pedal forward because the kickstand was in the way, and couldn't pedal backward because the brakes engaged. I don't remember how I fixed it.

Same if you drive an unfamiliar car, it's more bumpy in the beginning but your brain will adapt, especially manual gears. I remember some cars did have terrible clutches and gearboxes and very low torque engines so it felt intimidating as a kid.

Source: I have a bike with one coaster brake and one normal one. Have never intentionally used the coaster brake, have used it unintentionally many times.

Had my rim brakes at least once lose a lot of efficacy during a large downpour and coaster brakes make a great backup for extra breaking power. They sure do like to lockup your rear wheel but that is still better than the alternative of only having very weak rear/front breaks.

Many of the front brakes installed on less expensive bicycles are worthless and give riders a false sense of security.

You should test the brakes before every ride! The front brake should make it very, very hard to push the bike forward. (The back brake should lock the wheel but the bike will continue to move forward.) That way, you can quickly tell whether they are worthless or provide true security.

Very accurate.

“Pedal backwards. Really?”

That's a good test for blowing the cover of extraterrestrial imposters posing as human beings.

They don't know about pedaling backwards to stop a bike, because they were never a four-year-old human.

Children's bicycles have coaster brakes. In the USA, a federal law requires them.