>> Stockholm syndrome in action.

>That's a very negative way of saying "that's not my personal behavioral preference"

In my experience, Stockholm syndrome is not used to describe personal behavioral preferences, but rather (unexpected) transitions between such preferences from the negative to the positive.

In the grandparent's own words:

>>> i was shocked by that at first too. Then I came to love it.

It's possible that's what he meant, but that's not how I understand the term.

Stockholm syndrome refers is a victim forming emotional bonding with his or her captor[1]. Which would mean in instances like this, where the "captor" is a voluntary choice of language, the term is used akin to "masochism" (albeit without the sexual element). In essence, saying "the pleasure from use feature x is derived from the pain of using feature x".

Which is why I commented that "Stockholm syndrome" is a needlessly colourful way if saying "I disagree".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

The "masochism" aspect makes Go part of Bondage and Discipline languages:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage

Yes, but it requires that the victim has no way out. Stockholm syndrome is not just any unexpected change of preferences.

The victim has no way out short of switching languages which may or may not be under their control.

Stockholm syndrome, as far as I know, was observed in situations of physical threat to life or health with the only way out being death.

> Except it does though, since that's the very behaviour you're complaining about.

No, the meaning was: if someone cannot handle unused things, that someone is screwed. Go will not save him in other aspects which require a little bit of discipline and are not checked by the compiler.

> if someone cannot handle unused things, that someone is screwed.

So what you're saying is, there are two kinds of people—those who don't need the feature, and those for whom the feature isn't sufficient?

User laumars was apparently misinterpreting part of a comment by saying that "unused" errors (not warnings, but errors) would in fact save the hypothetical "someone" that was claimed to be not disciplined enough to remove unused imports at release time. But the parent comment was in fact saying that the disability to handle something as simple as unused imports would prevent said programmer to accomplish the less trivial things that programmers are expected to do and for which no tools is a substitute for.

My personal view on this is that warning the user should be enough. The compiler designer is basically saying: I can't trust developers to fix warnings and it is my duty to protect them from their own laziness by enforcing a certain way of working. This apparently attracts a certain kind of people. I prefer to be the one telling the compiler what to do, instead of the reverse.

> My personal view on this is that warning the user should be enough. The compiler designer is basically saying: I can't trust developers to fix warnings and it is my duty to protect them from their own laziness by enforcing a certain way of working. This apparently attracts a certain kind of people. I prefer to be the one telling the compiler what to do, instead of the reverse.

I'm with you there, I just was making a snarky comment :-)

This is literally the "perfect is the enemy of the good" fallacy.