As a sometime programmer, I understand those points, but I'm trying to comment as a user here, not as a programmer... and what the user sees is "this link does something bizarrely different from what I expected it to do when I clicked it." From the designer's point of view, if doing what the user expects is too expensive, then I think the best resolution is that the link shouldn't appear - even if doing something weird and confusing would be cheapest of all.