Is Epic doing anything to address UE4's crippling shader problem?

Like I said that’s all fine, but those kind of things should remain separate to the existing material editor. Graphics Programmers should have the freedom you described, but it shouldn’t be mixed in with the artists’ tools so that they are also forced to use it.

The Material Editor IMO should remain simple to use, over-complicating it would just give us a different kind of problem.