heroku-fucking-console

I feel like that example doesn't fit except in the specific case that the language designer restricts the usage of null in a way that reduces the overall expressiveness and power of the language. Whereas (but one example) the operators provided by Kotlin don't do that. Obviously how exactly you structure a particular end result is going to involve lots of fuzzy tradeoffs. My point wasn't about such nuance but rather the sort of reasoning that leads the the dismissal of an entire feature (in this case proper macros) on the basis of saving developers from themselves. There should be (at least IMO) a clear delineation between a language design that makes it possible to do things in a sensible manner versus the realm of style guides, linters, and pre-commit hooks that enforce restrictions intended to maintain sanity on large projects. I shoul

> tell users that something can't be done when the reality is it's entirely possible but the software won't do it This bit really stands out to me, and it bothers me to no end when I encounter it in the wild. It even afflicts FLOSS software! Without meaning to single out any one project in particular, a concrete example that's fresh on my mind is KDE's Dolphin. Lately "sudo dolphin" results in the flat-out lie that "Executing Dolphin as root is not possible.", rather than a much more informative statement such as "Doing this would make an entire class of otherwise impossible exploits possible, so the maintainer has made a personal judgment call to disallow this behavior." I think all software everywhere ought to conform to KDE's Human Interface Guidelines of "simple by default, powerful when needed" but would also like to see something ad