I suppose it depends what your starting point is. When I was a youngster my bikes all had steel wheels and side-pull brakes, and stopping in the wet was "interesting" at times! Therefore, from having bikes that you might have to leap off at a junction whilst still in motion to avoid a crash, I consider anything with alloy rims and cantis as absolute luxury in terms of stopping power in the wet. Consequently, I have no desire to have discs, and I think they look ugly anyway and totally spoil the appearance of what might otherwise be a nice looking machine. Similarly, I don't have any problem with traditional visibly-routed brake cables - in fact I rather prefer them, and any supposed "aero" advantage from internal routings is negligible anyway.
