That's a pretty valid <but>...</but> tag. However, I would argue (based on what I know of software development and the stories that I've seen posted on occasion

That's a pretty valid <but>...</but> tag. However, I would argue (based on what I know of software development and the stories that I've seen posted on occasion on HN) that knowing some of these oddities and details can come in a lot of handy someday. Even careful developers can accidentally run into some strange scenario which turns into one of these rarely-seen specifications, causing some bug. If you don't know these kinds of things, you'll have no clue where the bug could be coming from. And this is especially true in a language that can be as thorny as C++. As an example, in a program I'm working on which is still some ridiculously simple 100-line program, I shadowed a variable name inside a loop. (C++) I figured it would be ok because I was declaring the new variable after I was done using the previous one. But apparently, declaring a variable at all in a scope causes the new variable to be the one used inside that scope, even from the beginning. And considering the two variables were of a different type, it was causing a problem. Not hard to find in a small program, but might be harder to find in a large one. On the flipside, a lot of these issues might be relatively easy to find with a little intelligent Googling or asking Stack Overflow. But that time might have been better spent continuing development on the current project. And that time can add up.