Except that there actually was a problem in this case as evidenced by the surrounding discussion. If the code had been written
with a semicolon (or an if statement!) from the beginning, there never would have been a problem. You can argue that it wouldn't have been a problem if JSLint had been written "correctly" from the beginning, but every tool has bugs.
Code defensively, and don't get fancy unless you need to. You're not just complying with the language spec, you are communicating your intent to the other developers who will read and maintain your code.
Except that there actually was a problem in this case as evidenced by the surrounding discussion. If the code had been written with a semicolon (or an if statement!) from the beginning, there never would have been a problem. You can argue that it wouldn't have been a problem if JSLint had been written "correctly" from the beginning, but every tool has bugs.
Code defensively, and don't get fancy unless you need to. You're not just complying with the language spec, you are communicating your intent to the other developers who will read and maintain your code.