$ rm -- -

The problem is names that could be interpreted like options, like '-f' or '--help'.

This means, if you're in a directory with the files a, b, -rf, and the directories foo/ and bar/, running "rm * " will not delete all the files and keep all the directories; instead it will be turned into "rm a b bar foo -rf", meaning it will delete all the files and directories except for the file -rf.

  rm -- -

That snark isn’t necessary. It’s easier to use a web browser than to delete a file called - from the terminal. Or haven’t you used a non-GUI system before?

Everything has a learning curve, of course, but are you sure you're just not much more familiar with one of these two?

(edit: just to clarify, what do you expect a decent rm to do when given a single argument of “-”? While there may still be systems where that does not do what you'd expect it to do – it's no different to existing obsolete versions of browsers that do nothing at all when you type in something other than a valid URL in the address bar – and are thus considerably harder to use for some not familiar with the technology. The harder corner case would be to try and remove a file with name that can be confused for a valid flag – like '-i' – but even then, that's about the only corner case for the tool, and not a steep step to learn. Any recent coreutils rm will even suggest a valid command to remove files that look like options, but are not actually valid options, so some thought has been given to discoverability as well.)