The specific thing the author is suggesting is correct (components should suffer before users do), but I take great offense to their framing. "There may be times where you need to make an API do nothing." "The wrong thing to do is to have the printing functions throw a NotSupportedException." No, no, absolutely no - what the author is describing is a hack to support a shitty client. Yes, you have to do this sometimes. No, it is not normal or generalizable advice.
The way they've worded this betrays the internalization of their suffering as a MS developer.
The way they've worded this betrays the internalization of their suffering as a MS developer.