Footgun

Noun · Slang & Abbreviations

Definitions

  1. A feature, API, or tool that makes it easy for users to accidentally harm themselves — it's like handing someone a gun that's pointed at their foot. C's manual memory management is the canonical footgun.

    In plain English: A tool or feature that makes it really easy to accidentally cause yourself problems — like a power tool with no safety guard.

  2. JavaScript's type coercion is a classic footgun: [] == false is true, but [] is truthy. PHP's == operator, C's gets() function, and YAML's automatic type casting are all notorious footguns. Good language design makes the safe thing easy and the dangerous thing explicit.

    Example: 'The rm -rf with a variable that could be empty is the ultimate footgun. If $DIR is unset, you just ran rm -rf / on your server.'

    Source: language design examples

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