Out of curiosity: how's this different from the following?

  command 2>outfile.txt

Or is the intention just to be clearer/more obvious?

tcsh/csh cannot redirect stderr, there is no '2>'. There is a way but hard for me to remember

Between every program being modified to work around your old shell or you switching to a modern shell like everyone else, which one do you think sounds more reasonable?

UN*X has many shells for a reason, if you do not understand that then not much I can say to you.

Also I never said people should change their programs, I do that on the ones I write for my purposes.

I cannot edit, but I can see how you could have thought I was advocating '-e', I was not :)

I was advocating the "Hints" article

You can do this straight from the shell without needing every program to be modified.

I understand there are less powerful shells, as you list, but if for some reason you can’t use a more modern shell, aren’t you even less likely to be able to install updated apps?

As one who has worked on ancient servers:

Yes, installing updated third-party tools is very unlikely to happen.

Installing updates to your own tools is likely a regular occurrence.

So, your development style evolves to fit those constraints.