Patronizing Language Design?

[Walter Bright]

BCS wrote:
> I think (and it would seem Walter does as well) the answer here is to 
> trust the programer, but only when they ask to be trusted. Make it so 
> they have to explicitly do something (like do a cast) to get out of the 
> safe feature set. Then try and set up social construct to prevent them, 
> when possible, from needing to do the unsafe thing.

Essentially, correct. My preference is to try to make the easy way the 
safe and correct way, and the cowboy approach to be possible, but 
require deliberate effort to employ, and there to be clear indications 
in the code that a cowboy approach is being used.

For example (back to aircraft!), dust covers and other things that are 
handy to stick on the aircraft while on the ground, but would screw 
things up while in flight, have long red streamers attached. This makes 
it easy & quick to scan for any (literally) red flags before takeoff.