The first reaction to an unfamiliar warning in any language should be to consult the manual (or Google it). In the case of VisualStudio at least, this is trivia

The first reaction to an unfamiliar warning in any language should be to consult the manual (or Google it). In the case of VisualStudio at least, this is trivial (these days) due to the warning numbers you can paste into Google and usually get not just an explanation, but a way to fix it (usually via SO). Really, if a programmer can't fix warnings (and that includes taking the time to learn why they are there), what are you paying them for? My policy on projects I work on is to enable all warnings, treat them as errors, then only disable warnings after trying to fix them, researching them, and finally discussing them, and usually then only on a case by case basis (only occasionally do I eschew certain warnings altogether (such as -Waggregate-return for g++), and I leave them commented out with the reason they are disbled). (Edit: a quick tip for gcc, BTW: use -fdiagnostic-show-option for easier search of a warning, and the name of it in case you have to pragma it out).