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You snuck in a second premise to the argument: that it will increase the false positive risk. And if we accept that premise, we don’t need the other one. Bad p
by mikeash 7y ago
You snuck in a second premise to the argument: that it will increase the false positive risk. And if we accept that premise, we don’t need the other one.
Bad programmers are the ones who need the most help from our tools. Saying there’s no need for a warning because only bad programmers will benefit is like saying there’s no need for crossing guards because only stupid children get killed crossing the street.
- estebank 7y agoI think you just helped me understand where the objection comes from. The people against this warning seem to feel infantilized by these type of warnings, much in the way you're comparing it to crossing guards for children. My view, and I guess the view of people arguing for these kind of warnings see them like seatbelts: a mild annoyance that is very much worth it.
- mikeash 7y agoSounds about right. I don’t really get it myself. As a professional C and C++ programmer, every mistake is punished severely by the computer and I want all the help I can get in avoiding them. Warnings aren’t annoying, what’s annoying are one-in-a-thousand crashes that only happen on someone else’s computer.
- ken 7y agoI would say this seems more like airbags: a safety feature which requires no work on the user's part, 99.999% of the time, and which you might not even know exists up until the point when it jumps into action to save you.